SPEAKER BIOS
Syed Ubaid Ali Warsi is an IPC CID senior PCB designer with 20 years of diverse design experience, taking boards from design to prototyping, board bring-up, EMC compliance and final production. He specializes in high-speed PCB design and EMC compliance, where he navigates cutting-edge technologies like Intel’s Agilex and Stratix series, PCIe Gen3/4, 56Gbps PAM4, and 28Gbps NRZ interfaces. A notable HDI technology expert, he contributes to breakthroughs in 0.2mm CSP multi-lamination breakout boards.
Beyond his individual accomplishments, his mentorship has shaped the next generation of PCB designers. Through his mentorship, several professionals are now thriving at renowned companies like Intel, Xilinx, R&D Altanova, Hitek Systems, among others. He is the owner of Canadian-based company Wavetroniks.
Daniel Beeker is technical director at NXP Semiconductor, where he provides applications support and special function development tools and instrumentation for NXP Automotive customers worldwide. He has more than 43 years’ experience in electronics system design and EMC. He also specializes in EMC and signal integrity design techniques for systems and PCBs. He has completed more than 200 PCB design evaluations for customers and internal NXP products. He teaches field-based design techniques at NXP and industry conferences worldwide, more than 100 sessions with more than 5,000 attendees since 2010. He is also involved with NXP IC package design and IC development tool teams to support improved EMC performance, working on more than 20 IC designs. His unique approach to EMC is the result of many years of collaboration with one of the fathers of the industry, Ralph Morrison.
Caleb Buck is an electrical engineer and PCB designer with 13 years’ experience as a PCB designer and nine years designing Li-Ion battery systems for military, aviation and aerospace applications. He has spent the past six years focusing on how to increase PCB assembly reliability in harsh environments and in this work he has found PCB cleanliness to be of critical importance for mission-critical and life-critical systems.
Gerry Callahan is a senior embedded systems engineer with over 30 years’ experience designing, programming, and testing electrical circuits and systems. He has a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, and has worked in a variety of defense and commercial settings for small and large companies. He also enjoys mountain hiking and zymurgy.
Stephen Chavez, CPCD-I is a senior printed circuit engineer with three decades’ experience. Chavez is recognized throughout the industry as a global subject matter expert in PCB design. He is currently a principal technical product marketing manager with Siemens. He coauthored and is an instructor of the PCEA Printed Circuit Engineering Professional curriculum and certification (CPCD). He continues to pave the way for the evolution of the printed circuit engineering professional within the industry. His focus is on continuous improvement for the PCB design profession by serving as chairman of the PCEA.
Tomas Chester, P.Eng., CPCD-I, has over a decade of experience designing hardware products through all phases of its lifecycle. He has managed a variety of multifaceted, interdisciplinary projects, from simple interconnect interfaces to complex microprocessors. His creative designs utilize cutting-edge manufacturing techniques, while adhering to strict industry standards and specifications. Chester has extensive experience designing standalone single-sided circuit boards, as well as multi-board assemblies with mechanical integration. Chester is an instructor for Altium and the PCEA CPCD PCB engineering design courses. He has an engineering systems and computing degree from The University of Guelph.
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 serves on a number of IPC technical committees and cochairs the task group for IPC-9121, Troubleshooting for Printed Circuit Boards. He is a member of the IPC Technical Program Committee. He has coauthored numerous technical papers and works with Tier 1 designers in the avionics and space industry to design and develop products that need to have extended life, focusing on PCB design and reliability. Cooke has provided design for manufacture (DfM) consulting services to the industry along with extensive training/educational presentations from PCB 101 through Enhanced Reliability. He is also the team leader on a number of HDPUG projects and a member of numerous projects.
Terrie Duffy is a senior printed circuit board designer at McCauley Design Group, and an adjunct professor at Austin Community College. She has a bachelor’s in computer science from Texas A&M.
Agnieszka Franczak, Ph.D., is team member of Elsyca, where she is responsible for the Surface Finishing Division related to the upfront assessment and optimization of the electrochemical surface finishing process performances. She has authored or coauthored scientific and industry-related papers, book chapters and industry standards; and is a conference speaker, participant of industrial R&D projects, and an enthusiast of surface finishing of additively manufactured components.
Ray Fugitt is technical sales manager at Downstream Technologies. He has 37 years’ printed circuit board experience, 11 at Hadco in product and CAM engineering. In 2002, he joined Downstream in technical marketing and later, technical sales positions, where he supports and provides training for the BluePrint PCB and CAM350 products.
Rick Hartley, a 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 14 other countries. His career has focused on computers, telecommunications and aircraft avionics, as well as medical, automotive and appliances. He has taught seminars at numerous conferences, including the IEEE EMC Symposium, PCB West, IPC Apex Expo and others. He is on the board of directors of the Printed Circuit Engineering Association, 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.
Keith Kowal has been vice president of engineering at two startup companies including AT/Comm, a predecessor to EZPass, and at Ergo Computing, which developed a portable desktop PC as well as the first docking station. He was also part of a startup developing videoconferencing equipment, now called Polycom. He has experience at several medical companies, including Philips. He has published technical articles in PCB Design and has been a presenter at many technical conferences. He currently owns an electronics design consulting service and works for Applied Materials. He has taught at MIT as an electronic technical instructor, and holds a master’s from Boston University in computer engineering.
Matthew Leary has been designing PCBs full-time since 1996. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in physics. He currently works at Newgrange Design, a Boston-area PCB design service bureau.
Chun-Ting “Tim” Wang Lee, Ph.D. is a signal integrity application scientist and a high-speed digital applications product manager in Keysight Technologies. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado in 2020. His work focuses on understanding the printed circuit board fabrication process and how it impacts the on-board signal integrity. Lately, he has been presenting ways to improve simulation and measurement correlation. He has garnered much acclaim for his well-crafted presentations and memorable delivery style.
Charlene McCauley has over 42 years’ experience as a PCB and mechanical designer, 21 as the founder and manager of two design service bureaus. For the past 13 years, she has led McCauley Design Group, where she has served 50+ customers in the server, semiconductor, space, military aircraft, radar, satellite, medical, simulator, oil field industries. She has 8 years’ experience as an adjunct professor at Austin Community College teaching PCB design, electrical/electronic design, and technical drafting. She was employed at Dell for nine years as a senior PCB designer for the rack, tower, blade server, and storage systems, and now provides design services for Dell’s Precision laptop and server systems. She also provides Allegro/OrCAD training for her customers’ engineering departments.
Zachariah Peterson has an extensive technical background in academia and industry. He currently provides research, design, and marketing services to electronics companies. Prior to working in the PCB industry, he taught at Portland State University. His background in scientific research spans topics in nanoparticle lasers, electronic and optoelectronic semiconductor devices, environmental sensors, and stochastics. His work has been published in over a dozen peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and he has written hundreds of technical blogs on PCB design for a number of companies. He currently works with other companies in the electronics industry providing design, research, and marketing services. He is a member of IEEE Photonics Society, IEEE Electronics Packaging Society, American Physical Society, and the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA). He previously served as a voting member on the INCITS Quantum Computing Technical Advisory Committee and he currently serves on the IEEE P3186 Working Group.
Ethan Pierce is director of hardware engineering at Pierce Design, working with global customers to build and deploy IoT solutions. An electrical engineer by trade, he has spent his career building, consumer, medical, and defense connected products at leading hardware companies to leading IoT platforms. His specialty is maintaining holistic design intent from concept to mass production, producing successful IoT deployments at scale.
Michael Sivigny is in his 22nd year as owner and general manager at CeTaQ Americas, which he grew from scratch in the Americas after seeing an opportunity in February 2001. The parent company, CeTaQ GmbH, based in Dresden, Germany, developed a unique mobile measurement solution in 1996 to validate equipment performance in the electronics industry. The CeTaQ global brand is known today as an independent third-party provider of objective measurement equipment, highly accurate glass boards, components, software and service solutions. Prior to CeTaQ, Sivigny worked at Speedline Technologies, supporting sales of manufacturing equipment, and later at Eastman Kodak, improving quality on SMT manufacturing lines.
Adam Taylor is a world-recognized expert in design and development of embedded systems and FPGAs. Throughout his career, he has used FPGAs to implement a wide variety of solutions from RADAR to safety critical control systems (SIL4) and satellite systems. He also had interesting stops in image processing and cryptography along the way.
Taylor is a Chartered Engineer, Senior Member of the IEEE, Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, Arm Innovator, and Edge Impulse Ambassador. He is owner of the engineering and consultancy company Adiuvo Engineering and Training, which develops embedded solutions for high reliability, mission critical and space applications. Current projects include ESA Plato, and Lunar Gateway along with several other clients across the world.
FPGAs are Taylor’s first love, and he has authored numerous articles and papers on electronics design and FPGA design including over 500 blogs, amassing over 30 million views.
Mike Tucker is director of engineering and technology at Millenium Circuits (MCL). He has over 27 years; technical experience in PCB manufacturing (rigid/rigid-flex/HDI/flex/MPCB). He has been responsible for the development and implementation of manufacturing processes and methodologies to drive the company’s technology curve, capabilities, and competitiveness. He is an expert in front-end engineering, CAM tools, automation of CAM tooling, integration of CAM tools with MRP/ERP/shop-floor operations and software development of shop-floor software operations. He works closely with engineers, designers, program managers and OEMs to build mission critical parts from concept to prototype to production.
Lauren Waslick is PCB design director at Newgrange Design. She is also a senior PCB designer with 12 years’ experience. She runs the PCB design department of three design teams and over 25 designers, including overseeing training. Working at a service bureau for 12 years has allowed her to gain extensive design experience across many industries including medical, consumer products, defense, aerospace, alternative energy, robotics and more. She specializes in flex design, as well as HDI and high-speed, and has worked on hundreds of circuit board designs in her career. In 2019, she received her MBA from Babson College.
Susy Webb, CID, is a senior PCB designer with 40 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 PCB East and PCB West, and international design conferences, and consults for individual companies and PCEA chapters. 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, 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 PCEA Executive Board and education committee and is a member and past president of the Houston Chapter of the Designers Council.
John Watson’s career has spanned over 42 years in electronics, starting as an electronic technician with the US Army in the military intelligence field. In the late 1990s he shifted to printed circuit board design, and worked in cutting-edge fields with several Fortune 500 companies. Now customer success manager for Altium, he works with companies to provide needed training and develop best practices. He is also a professor for Palomar College teaching a 32-week program on printed circuit boards for new designers. He has authored two books on library and data management and is a member of various PCEA and IPC committees.
