Tutor Profiles

Dr. Phillip Allen received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kansas in 1970. He has worked and consulted with a number of companies including Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, General Motors (Delco), Pacific Missile Range, Texas Instruments, Lockheed Research Laboratory, and Schlumberger Well services. Dr. Allen has taught in several universities in the USA, including the University of Nevada, Reno, the University of Kansas, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Texas A&M University and Georgia Tech.

Dr. Allen is a registered electrical engineer and is a Fellow of the IEEE, and is widely regarded as one of the foremost international authorities on analogue CMOS circuit design. He is the co-author of "Introduction to Theory and Design of Active Filters" (1980), "Switched Capacitor Circuits" (1984), "VLSI Techniques for Analogue and Digital Circuits" (1990) and "CMOS Analogue Circuit Design" (1987). Dr. Allen has retired from the School of Electrical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology as Professor Emeritus in 2005, and is presently active in teaching short courses on analogue IC design to professionals worldwide. His current research interests include the areas of analogue CAD methodology, simulation and modelling, and GaAs precision analogue signal processing circuits.

Tim Cummins is CEO of ChipSensors Ltd, a fabless-semiconductor company specialising in CMOS sensor chips on 0.18um and 0.13um processes. He was born in Cork, Ireland, and received his B.Sc. (Hons) Degree in Electronics from the University of Limerick. In the early part of his career he worked for RTE, designing video equipment, and for Westinghouse Electric Corp. Pittsburgh, USA, where he designed sensor electronics and uP-based industrial control equipment. He worked with Analog Devices BV, Limerick, for 20 years, where he designed more than 18 CMOS IC's, published seven research papers in the area of mixed-signal IC design, presented ISSCC and ESSCIRC papers, obtained eleven US Patents, and held various Engineering and Technology Manager roles. Some of his current activities include lecturing on Semiconductor Physics on the VLSI M.Eng programme at University of Limerick, and design and layout of high-resolution analogue-to-digital converters and sensor structures on 0.18um CMOS.

Dr. Sean Millar was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and graduated in 1981 with a B.Sc (Hons) in Physics from The University of Liverpool. In 1987 he received his Ph.d in Solid State Physics from the same institution for his experimental study of the valence band structure of 3d transition metal alloys using Photoelectron Spectroscopy. Sean has worked for over 25 years in the Semiconductor Industry and has held a number of senior positions in Product Engineering, New Product Introduction (NPI), Process Engineering and Quality Management. He has spent the majority of his career at major multinationalsincluding Intel, AMD and most recently Xilinx. Sean specialises in Foundry Partner Management (especially Taiwan and Japan), Fab Process Yield Improvement, Customer Quality Management and engineering techniques for robust product delivery and excursion prevention. In 2010 Sean founded First Silicon Ltd, an Irish consultancy and training company offering manufacturing expertise to fabless chip companies and semiconductor start-ups, enabling them to cost-effectively manage their critical early-stage operational issues and life-cycle planning requirements. 

Dr. Fearghal Morgan has presented 5-day VHDL courses to industry in Ireland, UK, Finland & USA. He graduated from Queens University Belfast with a B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 1981 and Ph.D in 1986. Fearghal spent seven years as a design engineer of network and router products with Digital Equipment Corporation, co-authoring three patents during this period. He joined the Department of Electronic Engineering, NUI Galway in 1996 following four years lecturing in the Institute of Technology Tallaght, Dublin. Fearghal spent almost two years as Head of the Department of Electronic Engineering, NUI Galway during this period. He directs Bio-Inspired Electronics and Reconfigurable Computing research in NUI Galway (see here for more details). Since 1999, Fearghal has co-authored 1 further patent and published 35 peer-reviewed publications. He currently teaches Digital Systems Design, Applied VHDL and Microprocessor Systems.

Professor Willy Sansen lectures at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. He has a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and has been visiting professor at the universities of Stanford, Lausanne and Philadelphia.

Prof. Sansen has been the head of the ESAT-MICAS laboratory on analog design since 1984. He is cofounder of the workshops on Advances in Analog Circuit Design in Europe, and in 2002 he was the Program Chair of the ISSCC Conference.

His research is on design automation and on analogue integrated circuit designs for telecom, consumer electronics, medical applications and sensors, and he has supervised over 40 Ph.D theses in these fields. He has authored and co-authored over 550 papers and 11 books, including "Design of Analog Integrated Circuits and Systems" (MacGrawHill 1994), and the book ‘Analog Design Essentials (Springer, 2006), which will be distributed to all delegates as part of the notes for this course.

The Advanced Processor Technologies Group present the ARM System Design course for ITS-Ireland. The Advanced Processor Technologies (APT) group researches advanced and novel approaches to processing and computation. The group is based in the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester where research into computer technology began more than 50 years ago with the construction of the world's first stored-program computer. Today the emphasis of the research is on identifying novel ways to exploit the formidable complexity of the billion transistor microchips that semiconductor technology will make commonplace over the next decade.

Harry Veendrick graduated from the Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in 1977. In the same year he joined Philips Research Laboratories (also in Eindhoven) where he has since been involved in designing memories, gate arrays and complex video-signal processors. He holds 17 US patents in the area of CMOS circuit design, with another 15 patents pending, and he is the (co-)author of more than 25 publications on robust, high-performance and low-power CMOS IC design. In this field, he has contributed to many conferences and conference workshops, as reviewer, speaker, invited speaker,

panellist, organizer, guest editor and program committee member. In addition, he is the author of ‘MOS ICs (VCH 1992), Deep-Submicron CMOS ICs, from Basics to ASICs ’ (Kluwer Academic Publishers: 1st edition 1998, 2nd edition 2000) and ‘Nanometer CMOS ICs, from Basics to ASICs’ (Springer: 1st edition February 2008). He is a co-author of ‘Low-Power Electronics Design’ (CRC Press, 2004).

From 1980, in conjunction with his research activities, he has been actively involved in training more than 3000 semiconductor design, test, product, CAD tools and process engineers.

His principal research interests include designing low-power and high-speed complex digital CMOS circuits, with an emphasis on nanometer-scale physical effects and scaling aspects. He is currently leading the Deep-Submicron/Nanometer CMOS Electrical Design Cluster within the research group Mixed-Signal Circuits and Systems at NXP Research, formerly part of the 2006 Philips Semiconductors.

In addition to this, his interest in IC technology has created a link between digital IC design and IC process technology.

In 2002 he received a PhD degree in electronic engineering from the Technical University of Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He is a Research Fellow at Philips Research Laboratories and NXP Research and has been a Visiting Professor to the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering of the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

Herman Casier received his Masters Degree in Electronics from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium in 1970. As an assistant at the university he was first involved in the development of bipolar and MOS technologies with industrial partners. In 1977 he joined BARCON N.V., Kuurne, Belgium as senior IC Designer and in 1980 was one of the founders of the INCIR N.V. Design house. Since 1983 he has been with Alcatel Microelectronics Brussels, Belgium and has held several management positions with the design group. He is currently the Engineering Officer. His main involvement is in advanced mixed design projects in deep submicron CMOS and in High-Voltage CMOS/DMOS and BiCMOS. He is also involved in the definition and evaluation of technology extensions for mixed analogue/digital circuits and in analogue design methodology and tools. Currently he is working on high-speed and high-accuracy analogue interface circuits in CMOS technologies for telecommunications and automotive applications and on high-voltage and sensor interfaces for automotive and industrial applications.

Prof. Angel Rodríguez-Vázquez Angel Rodríguez-Vázquez, IEEE Fellow, is a Professor of Electronics at the Department of Electronics and Electromagnetism (University of Seville). He is also a member of the research staff of the Institute of Microelectronics of Seville - Centro Nacional de Microelectrónica (IMSE-CNM) - where he is heading a research group on Analog and Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuits. His research interests are in the design of analog interfaces for mixed-signal circuits, CMOS imagers and vision chips, telecom circuits, neuro-fuzzy controllers, symbolic analysis of analog integrated circuits and optimization of analog integrated circuits.

Dr. Rodríguez-Vázquez served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems - I form 1993 to 1995, as Guest Editor of the IEEE TCAS-I special issue on "Low-Voltage and Low-Power Analog and Mixed-Signal Circuits and Systems" (1995) , as Guest Editor of the IEEE TCAS-II special issue on "Advances in Nonlinear Electronic Circuits" (1999), as Guest Editor of the IEEE TCAS-I special issue on "Bio-Inspired Processors and Cellular Neural Networks for Vision" (1999), and as chair of the IEEE-CAS Analog Signal Processing Committee (1996).

He was co-recipient of the 1995 Guillemin-Cauer award of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, and the best paper award of the 1995 European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design. In 1992 he received also the young scientist award of the Seville Academy of Science. In 1996 he was elected to the degree of Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to the design and applications of analog/digital nonlinear ICs.

Prof. João Vital João Vital received the degrees of Licenciado (BSc), Mestre (MSc) and Doutor (PhD) in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1986, 1990 and 1994, respectively, all from the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisboa, Portugal. He has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of IST since 1985, where he is currently an Assistant Professor and a Senior Researcher of the Integrated Circuits and Systems Group. While on leave, he developed research work in the University of Pavia, Italy, in 1987 and 1988, in the University of California in Los Angeles, USA, in 1990, and in the Oregon State University, USA, also in 1990. He recently co-founded and became the Director of Technology of ChipIdea - Microelectronics, a Portuguese company dedicated to the design of mixed-signal integrated circuits. His scientific interests are in the area of mixed-mode signal processing, analogue-to-digital and digital-to-analogue conversion, functional modelling and simulation of data converters, as well as issues related with the design for digital testability of such converters. He published over 25 papers in international journals and conferences and is a co-holder of a European and US Patent filed by British Telecom.

Prof. Fernando Medeiro Fernando Medeiro was born in Higuera de Vargas, Badajoz, Spain. He received the Licenciado en Física Electrónica degree in 1990 and the Doctor en Física (Ph.D) degree with honours in 1997, both from the University of Seville, Spain. Since 1991 he has been working at the Microelectronics Institute of Seville (IMSE, C.S.I.C.). He is also with the Department of Electronics and Electromagnetism at the "Escuela Superior de Ingenieros" of the University of Seville, where he is an Assistant Professor. His research interests are in the field of Sigma-Delta converter, including modelling, behavioural simulation and design automation. In this topic Dr Medeiro has participated as a Lecture in several courses and has co-authored the book: " Top-Down Design of High-Performance Sigma-Delta Modulators".

Prof. Michiel Steyaert Michiel Steyaert is Professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL). His present research interests are in high-frequency analogue integrated circuits for telecommunications and integrated circuits for biomedical applications.

'Ben' Bennetts is an independent consultant in Design-For-Test (DFT), consulting in product life-cycle DFT strategies, and delivering on-site and open educational courses in DFT technologies.

In a career spanning thirty years, he has worked:
 

• In the Electronic Design Automation industry with LogicVision (96 - 97) and Synopsys (93 - 95) where he assisted with the specification of DFT synthesis products and development of the DFT market.
• As an independent DFT consultant (86 - 93) advising on technical and marketing activities in test technology, test strategies and DFT techniques for ASICs, boards and systems and lecturing extensively on these. During this time, he was a member of JTAG, the organisation that created the IEEE 1149.1 Boundary-Scan Standard.
• In the Automatic Test Equipment industry with GenRad (83 - 86) and Cirrus Computers (79 - 83), writing test programs and developing test methodologies and tools.
• As a researcher and lecturer at Southampton University, UK (68 - 78) where he obtained his Ph. D. in test-pattern generation, followed by extensive research into test-related topics.

Ben was Program Chair for the first three European Test Conferences and he has published over 80 papers plus three books on test and DFT subjects. He was the Invited Plenary-Session Speaker at the 1992 IEEE International Test Conference (ITC) and was Program Chair for the 1997 ITC. He is currently a serving member of ITC's Steering Committee. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of ASSET InterTech, advising on future directions of boundary-scan technology.