Chip expert Chen Ye joins China’s Zhejiang University – as it overtakes Harvard

Chen Ye, a semiconductor quality control expert with more than 16 years of industry experience in the United States, has been appointed as a Qiushi Distinguished Professor at Zhejiang University’s College of Integrated Circuits, the university has announced.

The university, based in Hangzhou, recently overtook Harvard University to become the world’s top academic institution in the 2026 Nature Index, ending its 11-year grip on the title which it had held since 2015.

Chen most recently served as chief scientist at Semitronix Corporation in Hangzhou, China, a role he took on in 2024, after returning from the US.

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Before that, he spent over 16 years at top American chip firms, including KLA and Anchor Semiconductor, where he specialised in developing defect-detection and yield-analysis systems for advanced chip manufacturing.

According to Zhejiang University, the tools developed under Chen’s leadership have been deployed in large-scale mass production at leading international wafer foundries such as TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), Samsung and Intel.

Chen’s connection to Zhejiang University runs deep. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Information Engineering at the university in 2003, followed by a PhD.

His semiconductor career in the US began in 2008 at Anchor Semiconductor, a pioneer in hotspot management and analysis software that supplies both foundries and integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) with solutions to improve manufacturing efficiency and chip yield.