For more than a decade, Douglas Mercer (RPI ’77 and former technical fellow at Analog Devices Inc.) has been sponsoring a project to design an integrated circuit (IC) in Professor Mona Hella’s Analog IC Design class. This fall 2022, the contest involved designing an operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) to be used in a sample and hold circuit in a 250nm process development kit (PDK) from TSMC. Mr. Mercer and Dr. Siddharth Devarajan (RPI, Ph.D. 2006) reviewed the students’ project submissions, listened to their final presentations, and announced the winners on the last day of classes
Congratulations to the students who won the Fall 2022 Analog Devices Circuit Design Contest. Below is more information on the winning projects and the winning students’ biographies!
First Place: Tom Petr and Bennet Young
Bennett Young is a senior electrical engineering major at RPI, concentrating in mixed-signal electronics, computer hardware systems, and microelectronics. He will be going to graduate school for a Master’s in electrical engineering, focused on analog and mixed-signal electronics. Bennett has completed internships at Intel and Herrick Technology Labs, and will be returning to Intel next summer, joining the phase-locked loop team in Hillsboro, Oregon.
Thomas Petr is a senior electrical engineer at RPI with concentrations in Mixed Signals Electronics and Computer Hardware Systems. He has a strong background in both software and hardware from internships at Sensata Technologies, Herrick Technology Labs, and spending long hours with RPI’s Formula SAE team, Rensselaer Motorsport. These experiences engrained a strong background and understanding of sensors, ASICs, microcontrollers, wiring harnesses, and good design practices. He has held leadership positions for Rensselaer Motorsport including “Electrical and Data Acquisition Design Lead” and “Engine, Drivetrain, and Electrical Project Manager.”
Tom Petr and Bennet Young selected an OTA with a triple cascode gain boosted architecture, which allowed for a high gain while retaining a high output swing and phase margin. Additionally, they were able to keep the power consumption of this design relatively low by minimizing wasted power in the biasing circuits and gain boost stages (normally the drawback of this architecture). This all resulted in a robust final design.
Second Place: Aaron Reers and Nico Altomare
Aaron Reers is an electrical engineering Master's student and received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at RPI. He is the president of HKN, the ECSE honor society, and he is currently doing research with Professor Wilt in wireless communication. He has previous experience in embedded systems at companies like Magna-Power and Analytical Instrument Systems. After graduation in the Summer of 2023, he hopes to get a job working in embedded systems, particularly in hardware engineering
Nico Altomare is a Co-Term Masters student in his final semester studying Electrical Engineering with focuses in Microelectronics and Control Systems. Nico became involved with the IC Design & Testing pilot program through the Embedded Hardware Club for which he is Treasurer and by the recommendation of Prof. Mona M. Hella, who was the Chief Engineer of his Capstone project, The Juggling Robot. Nico and his partner Aaron Reers recently received second place honors in the Analog IC Design Contest hosted by Prof. Hella in partnership with Analog Devices Doug Mercer, and Siddharth Devaranjan. Outside of academics, Nico is an avid rock climber and backyard bladesmith. For his pandemic relief, he picked up the hobby of blade smithing and built a steel forge in his backyard. He learned how to forge custom kitchen and pocketknives. As the recipient of the Analog Devices Outstanding Student Design Award, he will have the honor of attending the upcoming International Solid-State Circuits Conference.
Third Place: Yuhui Zhang
Yuhui Zhang is a PhD student at Department of ECSE, RPI, working with Professor Michael Shur. His research interests include 1) THz electronic devices and integrated circuits and 2) RF devices/circuits modeling & characterization. His research has led to publications in peer-reviewed journals such as Applied Physics letters, IEEE transactions on Electron Devices, and Journal of Applied Physics.