Danial is an academic at the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. His research focuses on developing new tools and paradigms of AI-assisted design and test automation for Electronics engineering. Previously, his research focused on optoelectronics sensors, including Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) arrays for biomedical and communication systems. He received his BSc in electronics engineering from Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran, in 2007, an MSc in Microelectronics and system engineering from the University of Bristol in 2009, and a DPhil in engineering science from the University of Oxford in 2013. During his DPhil studies, his work was based on various designs for Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) arrays. He designed and tested SPADs for CMOS imaging, fluorescent measurements, and optical communications. He made the first analogue SPAD arrays, which had a compatible readout mechanism with conventional CMOS image sensors. His thesis on single-photon avalanche diodes for optical communications demonstrated that a SPAD receiver can achieve faster data rates than its deadtime. In 2013, he joined the UCL Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering to develop wearable optical brain imaging systems. He used sensitive photo detection and compact digital systems to achieve high-density multi-wavelength source-detector arrays. In 2017, he joined the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh as a Chancellor's Fellow in Electronics. He was part of the co-investigator team at QuantIC, the UK Quantum Technology Hub in Quantum Enhanced Imaging. Danial is the programme director of MSc Electronics and teaches the IC design course and lab to the MSc students and undergraduates at the University of Edinburgh. For an updated list of projects and activities, please visit EElab.dev .

Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Electronics, 2022 - present

Chancellor's Fellow in Electronics, 2017 - 2022

Developing AI assisted design and test automation tools for Electronics Engineering.

Research Associate

2013 - 2017

Development of wearable diffuse optical tomography systems for near infrared spectroscopy.

DPhil in Engineering Science

2009 - 2013

Design and implementation of Single Avalanche Photodiodes (SPAD) based arrays for CMOS imaging, healthcare and optical communications.

MSc in Advanced Microelectronic System Engineering

2007 - 2008

Designing and simulation of an Field Programmable Analogue Array (FPAA) based on Analogue Lookup Tables (A-LUT)

BSc in Electronic Engineering

2002 - 2007

Implementation of a live text overlay system for PAL/NTSC video signals using Xilinx Spartan-3E FPGA as my final undergraduate project. (Ahvaz, IRAN)

Diploma in Maths and Physics

1997 - 2001

So far the most productive period of my academic life! I did various projects including software simulation for Fractal based mathematics, Single BJT amplifiers, wired and wireless networks (no Wi-Fi existed then!) , (Ahvaz, IRAN)


Danial Chitnis 2025