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    • Who should be the 2012 Test Engineer of the Year?

    Help choose the winner for this prestigious award by voting online for one of the six finalists. Voting deadline is December 16.

    T&MW Staff -- Test & Measurement World, 11/1/2011 12:06:00 AM

    Who will be the 2012 Test Engineer of the Year?
    Name almost any manufactured product with a long track record of success, and you’ll find one essential ingredient: a reputation for quality and reliability. In issue after issue, this magazine describes the latest methods for achieving product quality as practiced by the people most responsible for it—test engineers. Their work touches products at every stage: research, design, compliance, manufacturing, and field service.

    Test & Measurement World’s annual Test Engineer of the Year award, now in its ninth year, honors the vital contributions that test engineers make to the quality of electronic components and systems. We will present the 2012 Test Engineer of the Year award at the “Best in Test” event on January 31 during DesignCon 2012 in Santa Clara, CA. Our March 2012 issue will also profile the award recipient, who will designate an engineering school to receive a $10,000 grant, courtesy of National Instruments.

    This year, we received nominations of leading test engineers from a broad range of industries, and our editors have chosen six finalists for the award. The finalists’ work demonstrates the far-reaching nature of test and measurement, from business machines and security systems to compact medical devices and instruments that monitor manufacturing processes.

     
    Help choose the 2012 Test Engineer of the Year. Below, you can read about the finalists, taking note of their on-the-job skills and overall contributions to their fields. Then, go to the ballot to cast your vote for your favorite.


    SECURITY SYSTEM TEST
    Bohdan Atamanchuk, Smiths Detection

    Bohdan Atamanchuk
    In a year that marked the 10th anniversary of the September 11th tragedy, the importance of developing technologies for thwarting terrorists has once again been in the spotlight. As senior electrical designer in the Toronto, ON, division of Smiths Detection, Bohdan Atamanchuk plays a key role in ensuring the reliability of several systems, including handheld and desktop units that detect chemical and radiation threats.

    Atamanchuk designs digital circuitry for the instruments and plans and implements test strategies. Among his most valuable tools: simulation software, environmental chambers, data-acquisition devices, and digital oscilloscopes with accessories for measuring current and high voltages. He also brings to his work a background in temperature measurement and control, based on his PhD work in nondestructive testing of sensors.

    The sheer complexity of the company’s products poses a constant challenge, noted Atamanchuk, since the systems rely on multiple disciplines: electrical engineering, chemistry, physics, and math. Instruments typically combine extreme electronics sensitivity, high switching voltages, and high temperatures, plus pumps, motors, valves, and heaters. Atamanchuk has to contend with all this, plus tough requirements for chemical cleanliness and overall robustness in harsh environments.

    As part of his duties, Atamanchuk consults with manufacturing engineers and works closely with the sustaining engineering department. Currently, he is working on several projects aimed at improving the long-term performance of security devices while keeping costs low.

    Nominating manager:     Volodimir Bondarenko, Manager, Electrical Engineering, Smiths Detection, Toronto

    Read more about Smiths Detection and about Bohdan Atamanchuk's work:
    TEST SYSTEM INTEGRATOR
    Tim Carroll, Optimation Technology

    Tim Carroll
    Engineers who work at Optimation Technology, a company that provides design, fabrication, and test systems for a wide range of industries, need a broad knowledge of new technologies and a deep understanding of a customer’s application. Tim Carroll, senior systems integrator, fits that description to a T. In more than 200 projects since joining the company—about 75% of them involving test and measurement—Carroll has demonstrated proficiency in hardware integration as well as in a litany of programming languages, including C/C++, Visual Basic, ActiveX, Eclipse, Qt, LabView, and LabWindows/CVI. He also serves as a certified professional instructor for National Instruments.

    At Optimation, Carroll has developed several medical neurostimulator test systems. His work has included design characterization, device and software verification testing, and compliance and product acceptance testing. One manufacturing test platform, which tests multiple products in parallel, achieved a 400% throughput increase over the previous design. This year, Carroll also led the engineering team’s successful efforts to gain ISO 13485 certification, the quality standard for the medical device industry.

    Carroll stresses the importance of developing test tools that can serve both design verification and manufacturing test. And while he has developed test systems for many industries, from aerospace to oil field exploration, he gets the most satisfaction from medical projects, “where I can contribute to products that save lives or improve the quality of life.”

    Nominating manager: Dan Purvis, General Manager, Houston office, Optimation Technology

    Read more about Optimation Technology and about Tim Carroll's work:

    SEMICONDUCTOR TEST
    Brad Davis, Broadcom
    Brad Davis
    When Broadcom announced its BCM4330 wireless combo chip, some analysts commented on its complexity. On a single silicon die, the chip combines multiple cutting-edge wireless systems: 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and FM radio. Such design complexity, while offering cost, size, and performance advantages for mobile devices, also comes with monumental test challenges, and that responsibility lands squarely in the lap of RF wireless engineering manager Brad Davis.

    As leader of the WLAN hardware team, Davis manages and characterizes the RF performance of Broadcom’s WLAN mobility chips, modules, and drivers throughout their life cycles. With their expertise in RF hardware design and test automation, Davis and his team have pioneered techniques that have increased test coverage many times over and have improved test speeds by a factor of three over prior methods.

    “With product life cycles getting shorter, the test group doesn’t want to be the hold-up,” said Davis, who holds an MSEE degree. “That means days, not weeks, in getting drivers and boards tested and in the customer’s hands.”

    Davis takes pride in leading development of new test methodologies, such as extensive use of “one-box” testers to perform transmit-and-receive testing much faster than conventional bench equipment. He also has led efforts to implement multisite device testing and to automate measurement of low-current consumption, a vital issue in wireless combo chips.

    Nominating manager: John Ma, Manager, Design Verification Testing, Broadcom, Irvine, CA

    Read more about Broadcom and about Brad Davis's work:

    MANUFACTURING PROCESS MEASUREMENT
    Scott Heinbuch, Brooks Automation

    Scott Heinbuch
    An amazing array of products rely on a manufacturing process that occurs under vacuum, including semiconductors, LEDs, solar panels, disk drives, and glass coatings. But how do you ensure that vacuum processes are free from leaks, contamination, and other problems?
    The Granville-Phillips unit of Brooks Automation offers a compelling answer in its new VQM (Vacuum Quality Monitor). As the first commercial implementation of ART-MS (auto-resonant-trap mass spectrometer) technology, the system produces mass spectra more than 20 times faster, requires 80% less power, and calibrates much quicker than traditional gas analyzers.

    At every stage of the VQM’s development, product engineer Scott Heinbuch, a PhD electrical engineer, served as the prime test resource. Before the first version of control software was running, Heinbuch had developed an application to capture, display, and manipulate data coming from the ART-MS gauge. That software enabled hardware and firmware teams to test and debug early design concepts, slashing development time.

    Later, Heinbuch implemented long-term reliability testing for electronics modules; conducted highly accelerated life tests and stress-screening tests as well as product-safety reviews; and performed pretesting for electromagnetic compatibility. He also proposed the data and reporting structure that organized test results for the team on a shared server. Finally, to prepare for pilot manufacturing, Heinbuch developed a bed-of-nails platform for electronics testing that also serves in volume manufacturing test.

    Nominating manager: Tim Piwonka-Corle, PhD, Director of Engineering, Granville-Phillips & PTI Products, Brooks Automation, Longmont, CO

    Read more about Brooks Automation and about Scott Heinbuch's work:

    COMPUTATIONAL MICROSCOPY
    Aydogan Ozcan, UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
    Aydogan Ozcan
    In a world where 5 billion people use cellphones—75% of them in developing countries—Associate Professor Aydogan Ozcan and his UCLA research team are clearly onto something: developing compact test devices that attach to mobile phones. The latest example is a flow cytometer, weighing just one-half ounce, that can examine cells, bacteria, and microscopic particles. The optofluidic device, integrating imaging cytometry and florescent microscopy, is based on a technology that Ozcan calls “lens-free computational microscopy.”

    “What we’ve done is design a purely digital, lens-free imaging platform,” said Ozcan, a PhD electrical engineer. Behind that innovation: the use of computer algorithms to mimic the traditional function of a lens as an analog computer. In this approach, Ozcan’s devices, which include several types of microscopes, detect shadows of specimens rather than their actual images.

    The technology yields inexpensive devices with minimal hardware. For example, the flow cytometer could find wide application in the developing world to monitor patients with HIV, tuberculosis, or malaria. Ozcan also sees great potential for combining his computational tools with physical electronics to develop new kinds of portable sensors for environmental monitoring.

    With several patents issued or pending, Ozcan has founded a start-up company to license the technology for commercial products. “As an engineer, I’ll get the most satisfaction in seeing our platform used in real-world applications, such as improving health care in resource-poor countries.”

    Nominating manager:     Vijay Dhir, PhD, Dean, Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA, Los Angeles

    Read more about the Samueli School of Engineering and about Aydogan Ozcan's work:

    COMPUTER DEVICE TEST
    Pramada Singireddy, Dell
    Pramada Singireddy
    As Dell expands from being a PC kingpin into the world of computer networking and data storage, being able to deliver reliability along with competitive prices has become a chief concern for the company. That’s why engineers like Pramada Singireddy are so important.

    A test senior engineer in the Enterprise Product Group, Singireddy has led validation testing of servers, software, and storage hardware, which must be successfully integrated to satisfy wide-ranging customer applications. The work involves Dell’s server-management product portfolio, including PowerEdge servers such as the R810.

    As this portfolio of hardware and software increases, the test matrix for validation has grown exponentially. To address that concern, Singireddy embarked on an aggressive plan to develop and deploy test automation for expanding test coverage, improving product quality, and reducing program risk. This effort included extensive use of such tools as LoadRunner software to simulate system performance and the Python programming language for automating test scripts.

    In addition, Singireddy tapped Dell’s vast repository of customer data to analyze customer usage activities, as well as to extract product quality metrics. Armed with that information, she molded validation strategies, including life-cycle simulation of enterprise solutions. Recently, Singireddy was tapped for an exciting new project: serving as lead test engineer over 20 global teams that are developing highly complex software for the next generation of PowerEdge servers.

    Nominating manager:     Dave Albertson, Director, Test Engineering, Platform and Software Validation, Enterprise Product Group, Dell, Austin, TX 

    Read more about Dell and about Pramada Singireddy's work:

    Go to the ballot to cast your vote for the 2012 Test Engineer of the Year.
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