EEcosystem Podcast Episodes

Laura Martin, Industrial Engineer and Director of Application Engineering for Summit Interconnect talks about her unlikely path to becoming a subject matter expert for PCB Technology and how we might inspire more women to follow her lead into the technology sector.

Increasingly, a wide variety of electronic design applications face signal integrity issues. Therefore, engineers need to understand the fundamental principles of SI--not only techniques. SI expert, Scott McMorrow, and HS technical marketing expert, Matt Burns join us this week to talk about the state of SI know-how across the industry and why Samtec is investing heavily to create new resources to teach the needed fundamentals for professional engineers.

In this episode, Sean Patterson, COO of Summit Interconnect joins to discuss how PCB Manufacturers can have a direct impact on engineering success by engaging early in the design. He also explains how the knowledge of how PCB's are made will help ensure success across all your designs. Patterson also discusses how Summit is positioned to help modernize data-driven PCB manufacturing and how that will directly impact engineers in the US and North America. 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:07 Sean's unique background and perspective on PCBs 00:03:11 What should engineers understand about PCBs and the surprising complexity 00:04:09 How many engineering disciplines make up a PCB? 00:09:42 The importance of self-education and fun field-trips 00:12:43 The hidden perils of transitioning from prototype to production 00:14:26 Erroded PCB Capacity and Geopolitical factors 00:16:15 Modernizing PCB Fabrication with AI, Machine Learning, and new tools 00:19:40 Summit Companies as a customer-obsessed cohesive platform 00:23:02 Fueling industry-wide success and leadership 00:26:34 How PCB industry success will have direct impact to engineers 00:32:13 Where to find additional resources

In this episode, Gayle Collins and John Wood, Co-General Chairs of the International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2023) join us in this episode to talk about all that attendees can expect to see, hear and learn at this years impressive conference.

As Frequencies increase in today's demanding applications, the challenges and complexity of effectively managing interconnects grow exponentially. Samtec's David Beraun and Steve McGeary join in this episode to talk about what Samtec is doing to help engineers to push the limits. They also talk about new products they will be introducing and highlighting at IMS 2023 in San Diego.

Eli Hughes is Principal Engineer, Consultant, and content creator for NXP and other technology companies. Hughes has decades of experience in acoustics, hardware design, embedded, PCB design, and much more. In this conversation, we talk about how he developed both the philosophy and skill that have driven his successful and diverse engineering career.

Military Prime Technical Fellow and Air Force Aviator, Ben Dannan, discusses his unique perspective on engineering. Both his time in the air and his time on the bench have worked together to make him a more effective systems engineer. (This is part 1 of a 3-part series) 2:30 Ben’s current role and work at NGC, and his career path that included his formal education, to engineering complex mil/aero systems and ultimately led him to join the Air Force active reserves while he continued to concurrently work as an EE. 6:15 Flight experience in peace and combat, what planes he was trained on and how that ultimately lead to his role as Air Commando that supports special operations teams. 9:42 How Ben became a Technical Fellow at NGC (he didn’t ask for it!) and how he thinks all of his outside projects helped to qualify him for this honor. In short, it takes a lot of hard work and Grit. 11:46 Background in his first DesignCon paper and the value of excellent mentors. 13:39 How and why Ben became a Keysight ADS Certified Expert. The importance of hard work and the value of having the ability to do end-to-end simulation. 15:30 How working on the ground as a civilian engineer in Iraq (with BAE) inspired him to join the Air Force Reserves in order to become an operator and gain tactical awareness that informed his engineering work. 20:50 Working with Lee Ritchey on an incredibly hard EMC problem. The problem of delineations of engineering disciplines and how the “gap” often causes unintended consequences. 24:36 The problem of ignoring board effects on your system, and why whole system simulation is critical

In this episode of The EEcosystem Podcast, our guest is Dr. Alex Lidow, CEO and co-founder of Efficient Power Conversion and the co-inventor of the HEXFET, power MOSFET, and eGaN. Lidow holds degrees from Caltech and Stanford. He earned a Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University in 1977 as a Hertz Foundation Fellow. In this episode, we will find out more about Alex and learn about MOSFETs and the rise of GaN. How did MOSFETs grow so quickly? What technologies are driving GaN adoptions and why. We will also discuss the potential obstacles to GaN adoption.