Charith Mendis
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Education
- Ph.D., Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2020
- S.M., Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015
- B.Sc., Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, University of Moratuwa, 2013
Academic Positions
- Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, August 2020 - August 2021
- Assistant Professor, Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, August 2021 - Present
- Affiliate Assistant Professor, Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, April 2024 - Present
- Affiliate Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, April 2024 - Present
Research Interests
- Compilers
- Programming Languages
- Machine Learning for Program Optimization
Research Areas
Honors
- Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Artifact Award, ISPASS (2026)
- DARPA YFA Director's Fellowship (2026)
- Honorable Mention for the Best Artifact Award, SIGMOD (2025)
- Distinguished Paper Award, POPL (2025)
- Google ML and Systems Junior Faculty Award (2025)
- IEEE Micro Top Picks Honorable Mention (2024)
- Grainger College of Engineering Council Outstanding Advisor Award (2024)
- DARPA Young Faculty Award (2024)
- NSF CAREER Award (2024)
- List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent By Their Students, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2023)
- List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent By Their Students, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2022)
- List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent By Their Students, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2021)
- Best Paper Award, ML for Systems Workshop at ISCA (2019)
- Best Student Paper Award, IEEE BigData (2017)
- William A. Martin Thesis Award for Outstanding SM thesis, MIT (2015)
Recent Courses Taught
- CS 426 - Compiler Construction
- CS 521 LCC (CS 521 LCU) - ML & Compilers
- CS 521 LCC (CS 521 LCU) - ML and Compilers
- CS 526 - Advanced Compiler Construction
- CS 591 ACT - Advanced Compiler Technology
- CS 598 CM - ML for Compilers & Architect.
News Notes
- 4/30/2026
Muyan Hu, a CS Ph.D. student advised by Charith Mendis and Vikram Adve, received the ML and Systems Rising Star Award.
- 4/28/2026
CS Ph.D. student Devansh Jain and advisor CS professor Charith Mendis, along with Jianming Tong, Yujie Li, and Tushar Krishna received an honorable mention for the Distinguished Artifact Award at the ISPASS-2026 conference for MINISA: Minimal Instruction Set Architecture for Next-gen Reconfigurable Inference Accelerator.
ISPASS is the IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software.
- 4/7/2026
CS professor Charith Mendis received the extremely selective 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐏𝐀 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐅𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 for an 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐏𝐀 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐲 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 (𝐘𝐅𝐀) 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭. The Director’s Fellowship is given each year to a limited number of YFA awardees with outstanding progress.
- 2/18/2026CS Ph.D. student Chamika Sudusinghe has received the following IEEE awards: IEEE-USA George F. McClure Citation of Honor; IEEE MGA Young Professionals Achievement Award; IEEE Larry K. Wilson Regional Student Activities Award; IEEE Region 4 Young Professional Achievement Award, and is affiliated with the ADAPT group led by CS professor Charith Mendis.
- 8/14/2024
CS professor Charith Mendis was named a Grainger College of Engineering 2024 Engineering Council Outstanding Advisor and recognized as one of the top 10% of engineering advisors selected by their students.