SPEAKER BIOS

As lead executive responsible for marketing and technology roadmap, DUANE BENSON has helped bring Screaming Circuits to the forefront of electronics manufacturing in North America. He’s a contributing author to EDN, EE Times and other United Business Media publications and had his own column on Internet of Things World. He is also a regular speaker at industry events such as PCB West and the Embedded System conference. Duane is a subject matter expert on prototyping traps, layout and assembly challenges, field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), embedded systems, high-density components, system architecture and board design best practices. Screaming Circuits is a division of Milwaukee Electronics.

ERIC BOGATIN, Ph.D. received a bachelor’s in physics from MIT and a doctorate in physics from the University of Arizona. He has been active in the SIPI field for 35 years. He was a featured columnist for PCD&F magazine for 10 years and a frequent speaker at PCB West. He focuses on training engineers on best measurement practices using high-performance scopes, TDRs and VNAs. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he teaches printed circuit board design and high-speed digital design. In addition, he is the technical editor of the Signal Integrity Journal.

RALF BRUENING is product manager for high-speed design systems at the Zuken EMC Technology Center in Paderborn, Germany, responsible for product marketing and business development for the Zuken SI, PI and EMC analysis tools. Part of his responsibility is to help customers implement signal- and power-integrity analysis in PCB design flows and concrete project consulting and technology development. He holds degrees in computer science, electrical engineering and economics from the University of Paderborn. He has 30 years of experience in Electronics and EDA. He is a regular speaker at international conferences, and is involved in European Union-funded technology research and standardization activities (e.g. IBIS).

MICHAEL CATRAMBONE is a senior principal product engineer for Allegro PCB products at Cadence Design Systems, focusing on Allegro core functionality (concurrent engineering, constraint management, high-speed interfaces and interconnect and emerging technologies). He joined Cadence in 2012 as a principal product validation engineer prior to moving into his current role in 2015. Prior to joining Cadence, he had over 24 years’ experience in PCB development, library management, EDA software support and value-added process improvement working for such companies as Automated Systems, USRobotics, 3Com, CommWorks, UTStarcom and Plexus Engineering Solutions. He remains deeply involved with the PCB design community, a past chairman of CDNLive – Cadence User Group and a past chair/board member of the International Cadence Users Group.

JOHN CARNEY is an application engineer/architect at Cadence. He graduated from Southern Illinois University with a degree in electrical engineering. He worked for OrCAD in technical support and became part of Cadence in 2000. He became a field application engineer in 2005. He currently serves on the San Diego IPC Designers Council as education chair. He has a passion for engaging with customers to make them more efficient with Cadence Allegro software. He supports the entire Allegro product line.

KEVEN COATES has been a development engineer at Geospace Technologies for six years, where he designs low-noise seismic recording devices, industrial battery testers/chargers, and battery protection circuits. His work concentrates on embedded processors, low-noise circuits, high-power circuits, thermal design, battery safety, and battery management. He spent the previous 20 years working for Texas Instruments, specializing in high-speed PCB layout/signal integrity, BGA layout, thermal issues, and PCB-friendly BGA packaging for consumer and automotive applications. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University.

PAUL COOKE has more than 30 years of experience in printed board (PWB) design and manufacturing. He has held senior positions in operations, quality, process engineering and field application engineering at some of the top North American PCB manufacturers. He has served on a number of IPC technical committees to develop industry standards, and recently received an award for contributions to IPC-9121, “Troubleshooting for Printed Circuit Boards.” His current position is solely focused on working with designers in the avionics and space industry to design and develop products that need to have extended life and long-term reliability in harsh environments.

JOHN COONROD is technical marketing manager for Rogers, Advanced Connectivity Solutions Division. He has 32 years of experience in the OCB industry. About half of this time was spent in the flexible circuit industry, regarding circuit design, applications, processing and materials engineering. The past 18 years have been spent supporting high-frequency circuit materials involving circuit fabrication, providing application support and conducting electrical characterization studies. Coonrod is chair for the IPC-D24C High Frequency Test Methods task group and holds a bachelor of science, electrical engineering degree from Arizona State University.

JOSEPH FAMA is a veteran of the EMS industry, having focused on business development of Tier 3 EMS companies. His career has revolved around managing Asian companies from Singapore, Malaysia, China, Philippines and now Vietnam. His success is attributed to innovative business models that call for collaboration with industry operatives, as well as suppliers themselves. Fama’s success has many notable accomplishments that have hoisted obscure companies into successful enterprises.

GARY FERRARI has extensive experience in electronic packaging with an emphasis on printed board (PWB) design and manufacturing. He has held senior operations, quality and engineering positions in OEM and supplier environments, and served as executive director and cofounder of the IPC Designers Council. He has served on a number of IPC technical committees, including the IPC-2221/2222 Design subcommittee, and chaired the IPC Technical Activities Executive Committee. He has written numerous technical articles and provided design for manufacture (DfM) consulting services to the industry. Ferrari spearheaded IPC’s highly successful PWB Designers Certification Program, which has trained and recognized over 6000 designers to date. He received the IPC President’s Award in 1990, and the IPC Raymond E. Pritchard Hall of Fame Award in 2015, recognizing his contributions to the electronic interconnection industry and the association.

MARK FINSTAD is senior application engineer at Flexible Circuit Technologies. He co-chairs the IPC-2223 Flexible Circuit Design standard, sits on IPC-6013, IPC-4202, IPC-4203 and IPC-4204 committees, and has over 35 years of experience in design, manufacture, and test of flexible circuits. He has authored articles in numerous trade magazines, and currently coauthors the “Ask the Flexperts” column for PCD&F magazine with Nick Koop.

MICHAEL FORD is senior director of emerging industry strategy at Aegis Software. He uses his years of electronics assembly manufacturing experience to drive both business and technology solution innovation that satisfies evolving needs in digital manufacturing. Ford is an established thought leader for Industry 4.0 and digital Smart Factories, and an active contributor to industry standards with the IPC, in the areas of the Connected Factory Initiative (CFX), traceability and the digital factory platform.

RAY FUGITT has 30+ years of printed circuit board experience. He spent 15 years on the manufacturing side, 11 with Hadco in California. Joining Advanced CAM Technologies as an application engineer, he supported the CAM350 product through PADS and later Innoveda mergers. In 2002, he joined Downstream Technologies in technical marketing and later technical sales positions. He continues to support and train for both the BluePrint PCB and CAM350 products.

XIAO-MING GAO has been working at Intel for 20 years and has extensive experience in signal and system, I/O circuit design, signal and power integrity analysis, and high-speed platform design. He holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering. He has four patents and other pending applications.

ROBERT HANSON, MSEE, has more than 40 years’ experience in design, manufacturing, and testing. He has bachelor’s degrees in industrial engineering, business administration, and both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering. Hanson’s experience includes as a digital design engineer at Boeing, Rockwell, Honeywell, and Loral. He teaches and consults nationally and internationally to corporations, conventions, universities and other entities.

BILL HARGIN is the director of everything at Z-zero, providing stackup design and PCB material selection software to OEMs, ODMs and PCB fabricators. He has authored multiple articles on signal integrity, is a regular columnist for PCD&F, and more than 10,000 engineers and PCB designers worldwide have taken Hargin’s workshops on high-speed PCB design. With more than 20 years of experience dealing with PCB signal integrity, Hargin served as director of marketing for Mentor Graphics’ HyperLynx SI software and director of North American marketing for Nan Ya Plastic’s PCB laminate division.

RICK HARTLEY, recently retired senior principal engineer at L-3 Avionics Systems, is principal of RHartley Enterprises, through which he consults and teaches internationally. His focus is on correct design of circuits and PC boards to prevent and/or resolve EMI, noise and signal integrity problems. He has consulted with major corporations in the US and 12 other countries. His career has focused on computers, telecommunications and aircraft avionics, as well as automotive and appliances. He has taught seminars at numerous conferences, including the IEEE EMC Symposium, PCB West, IPC Apex Expo and others. He is a past member of the Editorial Review Board of Printed Circuit Design magazine and has written numerous technical papers and articles on methods to control noise, EMI and signal integrity.

DAVE HOOVER is a senior field application engineer at TTM Technologies, where he supports some of its top telecom customers. He has 40+ years’ experience in PCB fabrication, and has been involved with the development of HDI, microvias and other leading high-speed technologies. His career includes PCB fabricators such as Hadco/Sanmina, Data Circuits, Litronic Industries, and Multek.

VINOD ARJUN HUDDAR received a bachelor’s in engineering from University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (U.V.C.E) Bangalore as electronics and communication engineer in 2007. His has 11 years’ experience in signal integrity and power integrity with Western Digital, Seagate HDD, Nvidia and EchoStar. In his current position he is responsible for SI-PI co-simulations for parallel bus interfaces. He has numerous patents filed in the signal integrity and power integrity domains.

BEN JORDAN is a computer systems and PCB engineer with over 20 years of experience in embedded systems, FPGA and PCB design. He is the chief evangelist for Altium’s free CircuitMaker tools and community. He started at Altium as a senior applications engineer more than 12 years ago, traversing roles since as field applications engineer, tech support manager (USA), product marketing and senior product manager before arriving at his current station. He is an avid tinkerer and is passionate about the creation of electronic devices of all kinds. He holds a bachelor’s in engineering (CompSysEng) with First Class Honors from the University of Southern Queensland and is an IPC CID certified designer.

STAN KEIGHTLEY JR., began working in electronics manufacturing as a machine operator in 1995. Later he became an SMT programmer and then SMT process engineer before joining WISE Software Solutions in 2001 as a support specialist. He has spent the last 16 years as head trainer and applications engineer with WISE, assisting customers with automation and advocating for customer needs within the development team. He has been a champion for reduction of manual data entry since his early days in the industry, and his current focus is on assisting customers in increasing throughput and reducing human error in processes that can be automated through software support.

HARRY KENNEDY is a field application engineer for NCAB Group, where he helps design engineers and contract manufacturers design a better PCB. He focuses on design tradeoffs and product application in order to determine the best possible options. Kennedy learned how to design advanced PCBs from his previous job as an applications and validation engineer at Texas Instruments. He received a bachelor’s in engineering from Ohio State University.

NICK KOOP is director of flex technology at TTM Technologies. He co-chairs IPC-6013, Flexible Circuit Performance, sits on IPC-2223, IPC-4202, IPC-4203, and IPC-4204 committees, and has over 35 years of experience in design, manufacture, and test of flexible circuits. He coauthors the “Ask the Flexperts” column in PCD&F.

MATTHEW LABAR is an engineer for Bay Area Circuits, where he focuses on design for manufacturability, material selection and process parameters. He has 10 years’ experience in the PCB manufacturing industry and is working on a master of science in mechanical engineering at CSU Sacramento.

TIMOTHY LOMBARD is founder and managing director of PCBevo. He spent more than 25 years at Cisco Systems as ECAD application engineer, ECAD manager, EDA tools manager, tech lead in operations. He has six years’ experience as a Python programmer, data engineer and more than two more as an application developer.

OFER MALTIEL is an additive technology expert with a passion for helping enterprise companies and startups drive innovation in their fields. He partners with companies to break the conventional cycle of design, utilize new technologies to solve problems, and gain tactical advantages over competitors. Before starting at Nano Dimension, Maltiel spent eight years leading the hardware engineering team for a successful startup that created the first smart, connected underwater navigation systems. This experience creating a new market taught him to challenge the way things have been done before and build new design approaches. He now uses these skills to help companies bring more innovative products and services to the market.

PHIL MARCOUX has been involved with SMT for over 40 years, having founded one of the first SMT companies (AWI) in 1981. He transitioned into and helped pioneer the heterogeneous realm starting in 1991 when he cofounded ChipScale, Inc. and initiated the creation of the 3-D Business Council (2012) to help facilitate what is now called heterogeneous technology. Phil is still active in technology and serves on the MEPTEC Advisory Board, is a life member of IEEE, past member of the University of Florida Engineering College Advisory Board and occasional company consultant. His recent published articles appeared in CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY and Meptec Report. His other activities include Hopes-Corner Org (member of Board), Santa Clara Community Services Agency (volunteer), biking, sea kayaking, and devoted husband, father, and grandfather.

ATAR MITTAL is an electrical engineer who manages Sierra Circuits’ design and assembly divisions. Passionate about high-speed designs, he loves to write about signal integrity, controlled impedance, etc. He recently gathered all his notes and put together a design guide on PCB transmission lines.

GREG PAPANDREW has extensive experience in domestic and offshore manufacturing, supply chain management and building creative marketing plans for businesses, enabling companies to lower production costs while raising sales numbers. He previously founded a major bare board distribution company and has worked in executive sales positions at large and small US fabricators.

NAVEID RAHMATULLAH has worked for Intel for 18 years and has managed multiple hardware design teams. He has been leading the board design and manufacturing process and methodologies improvements within Intel to maximize efficiency and delivery of high-quality hardware platform systems. He holds a degree in electrical engineering and has authored several technical papers.

LEE RITCHEY is considered one of the industry’s premier authorities on high-speed PCB and system design. He is the founder and president of Speeding Edge, an engineering consulting and training company. He conducts onsite private training courses for high technology companies and also teaches courses through Speeding Edge and its partner companies in public venues, as well as at industry trade shows and technical conferences. In addition, he provides consulting services to top manufacturers of many different types of technology products, including Internet, server, video display and camera tracking/scanning products. He is one of the original speakers at PCB West.

SHASHANK SAMALA is cofounder of Tempo Automation and is vice president of product. While at Square, he was struck by how slow hardware iterations for credit card readers were (months to years), while on the software side iterations were measured in hours. Determined to help electrical engineers build their hardware faster, he cofounded Tempo Automation. With Samala’s vision, Tempo has built a robotic factory that can take electrical engineers’ projects from design-to-order-to-assembled circuit boards in hand in as fast as three days.

HEMANT SHAH is group director of product management for PCB products at Cadence and is the Consortium Chair for IPC-2581 Consortium. Hemant led the effort to create an industry-wide consortium of design and supply chain companies to get IPC-2581 – the standard for transferring PCB design data to manufacturing – adopted. Earlier, Hemant managed the Allegro signal and power integrity products for PCB and IC packaging.

DANIEL SMITH is a 38-year veteran in all roles of the PCB design process (concept through manufacturing/destruction). He has two US patents for EDA-related inventions and has programmed in a variety of software languages. He has taught a variety of PCB design courses, including HDI and other topics.

VERN SOLBERG is an independent consultant specializing in SMT and microelectronics design and manufacturing technology. He has served the industry for more than 30 years in areas related to commercial and aerospace electronic products and is active as an author and educator. He holds several patents for IC packaging innovations, including the folded-flex 3-D package technology, is author of Design Guidelines for Surface Mount and Fine-Pitch Technology, and is a speaker and instructor supporting several industry organization technical programs, including IPC and SMTA. He is currently an IPC Ambassador Council member, chairman of the task group that developed IPC-7094, “Design and Assembly Process Implementation for Flip Chip and Die Size Components,” and a Certified IPC Trainer for IPC-A-600 that focuses on acceptability of printed boards.

TROY TOPPING, Ph.D. is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at CSU Sacramento. His research focuses on developing ultra-high-performance materials for extreme applications such as vehicle armor, aerospace, and oil and gas exploration. These materials can save lives and conserve energy in the long term. Topping holds a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from UC Davis.

MIKE TUCKER has been manufacturing circuit boards for over 20 years, and has worked at several North American PCB shops focusing on the high-technology, prototype world. His background is in front-end engineering, CAM, process engineering and many other hats inside a board shop. He has taught and presented at IPC Apex Expo and PCB West on numerous occasions. He is a Certified IPC Trainer to IPC-A-600. He has spearheaded many quality and manufacturing initiatives/certifications: ISO 9001, AS9100, Nadcap, US military specifications/compliances MIL-31032, MIL-P-55110, MIL-P-50884 and several others. He has an extensive background working closely with customers early in projects, during project lifecycle and post-delivery to improve products, reduce cost or resolve problems.

SUSY WEBB is a senior PCB designer with 38 years of experience. Her career includes experience in coastal and oceanographic oil exploration and monitoring equipment, point-to-point microwave network systems, and CPCI and ATX computer motherboards. Webb is a regular speaker at the PCB, IPC and international design conferences and consults for individual companies and Designers Council chapters as well. Her presentations discuss practical implementation of complex engineering concepts into board layout, and methods to improve the overall design and flow of printed circuit boards. She is CID certified, a former writer/columnist for PCD&F magazine, a chapter writer for Clyde Coombs Printed Circuits Handbook, and one of the judges for the annual TLA competition. Webb is also an active member of the IPC Designers Council Executive Board and education committees, and is a member and past president of the Houston Chapter of the Designers Council.

Over the past 30+ years, DAVID WIENS has held various engineering, marketing and management positions within the EDA industry. His focus areas have included advanced packaging, high-speed design, routing technology and integrated systems design. He is currently the product manager for the Xpedition portfolio of products for electronics systems design. He holds a bachelor’s in computer science from the University of Kansas.

GREG ZIRALDO is director of operations at Advanced Assembly. With over 13 years of experience in PCB prototype and aerospace and defense electronics manufacturing, he is responsible for all areas of engineering and manufacturing. Prior to Advanced Assembly, he was manager of manufacturing at TTM Technologies.