Hu grew up in China as the daughter of two engineers. She studied engineering at
Tianjin University, graduating in 1982. After a master's degree in 1984 in electrophysics at the
Polytechnic Institute of New York, she completed a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1989 at
Purdue University. While continuing her graduate education, Hu worked as an engineer for
Delco Electronics, and after completing her Ph.D. she was a researcher for four years at
General Motors Research Laboratories. In 1993 she returned to academia as an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering and computer science at
Western Michigan University. She moved to the
University of Notre Dame in 1996, at that time and for several years later the only woman faculty member of her department. She earned tenure there as an associate professor in 2000, and was promoted to full professor in 2008. She has chaired the
Special Interest Group on Design Automation of the
Association for Computing Machinery since 2018 and has been editor-in-chief of
ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems since 2020. Hu served as general chair of the 2018
Design Automation Conference. ==Recognition==