Frank Vahid is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, Riverside; Chair of the Faculty of Engineering at UCR; and Associate Director of the Center for Embedded Computer Systems at UC Irvine.

He received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois in 1988 graduating with highest honors, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Irvine in 1990 and 1994, respectively, where he was an SRC Fellow.

Since 1990, he has co-authored over 120 conference and journal papers, including the best paper award from IEEE Transactions on VLSI in 2000, a DATE conference best paper award, and a DAC conference best paper nomination. He is co-author of the textbooks "Digital Design," "VHDL for Digital Design," "Verilog for Digital Design," and "Embedded System Design" (John Wiley and Sons 2006, 2007, 2007, and 2001, respectively)) and of "Specification and Design of Embedded Systems (Prentice Hall, 1994) He received the Outstanding Teacher of the UCR College of Engineering award in 1997 and the College's Teaching Excellence Award in 2003. He was program and general chair for the IEEE/ACM International Symposium on System Synthesis in 1996 and 1997, respectively, and for the IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Hardware/Software Codesign in 1999 and 2000, and has served on the Steering Committee of Embedded Systems Week since its inception.

He has worked as an engineer for Hewlett-Packard and for AMCC, and has consulted for Motorola and NEC, among other companies. His research is or has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, Philips, Motorola, Xilinx, TriMedia, and NEC, among others.

His research emphasizes highly novel self-adapting compute architectures, and creating a generation of electronic sensor blocks that non-experts and experts alike can easily compose to build basic useful sensor-based systems. His teaching emphasis includes seeking to motivate students to build innovative new systems that improve the human condition.