Valavi, who is also the assistant director of undergraduate studies, has taught or co-taught a range of courses that includes circuits, logic, machine learning, robotics and integrated systems design. His current research focuses on the intersection of machine learning and efficient hardware design.

Valavi has received a 2022 Walter Curtis Johnson Prize for Teaching Excellence highlighting the success of the Car Lab course, which he has co-taught since 2021, and multiple SEAS Outstanding Teaching Awards for the courses “Introduction to Computing,” “Electronic Circuit Design,” “Contemporary Logic Design,” “Robotic and Autonomous Systems Lab” and “Design of Very Large-Scale Integrated (VLSI) Systems.” He received the Princeton Engineering Council’s Excellence in Teaching Award as a graduate student in 2017, and as an instructor in 2022 and 2025 for his course “Electronic Circuit Design, Analysis and Implementation."

Valavi joined Princeton as a lecturer in 2020 after completing his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at Princeton in the same year. While Valavi was a graduate student at Princeton, he and his lab mates worked on the design and implementation of a novel computer chip architecture for advanced artificial intelligence. For this work, the team won a 2024 Edison Patent Award from the Research and Development Council of New Jersey.