Week 22: Missed Opportunities

Have you ever forgotten that you should be at a specific meeting or woken up in the middle of the night sure you’re not remembering something important? In our age of distraction, surely one of those remembralls from Harry Potter’s world would come in handy and find a huge market. Is anyone in the tech world working on one? (No, reminder apps don’t count.) Then there is pain of missing something that you remembered and know to be important. That happened to me last week when I missed my flight from Portland to San Jose and with that missed both an interview for Take 5 with Warren Savage at IPextreme and the DAC Strategy Committee meeting led by vice chair Chuck Alpert. It was, by the way, only the second time I have ever missed a business-related flight. I have to admit I usually cut it extremely tight and arrive at PDX with 10 minutes to spare before boarding. I would have made it this time too had I-84 not turned into a parking lot.

Mac McNamara covered for me and did the interview, which was probably for the better as Mac knows much more about IP than I do and already knows the ropes when it comes to being a guest on Warren’s YouTube channel. (Check out Warren’s 2013 interview with Mac below.) He is our IP chair for a reason. I’ll be sure to post the new video in a future post as soon as it’s available.

And according to Chuck, the DAC strategy meeting went very well. He reported a lively discussion with plenty of actionable suggestions. We will try and implement some of them for DAC 2015; and then Chuck can have a go at the rest when he chairs DAC 2016 in Austin.

But back to opportunities… One you should not miss is the submission deadline! Proposals for the following are due November 13: panels, tutorials, workshops and co-located conferences. As yet I haven’t written much about these in my blog though they remain important ways to contribute to the conference. Abstracts for research papers are due Nov.21 and full manuscripts are due Dec. 2. You can submit in these five categories: automotive electronic design, EDA research, ESS research, hardware software and security, and work-in-progress (WIP). I hope all those links help. Of course you can find more information and everything else you need on DAC.com.

One input from the strategy committee was to make the panel submission as easy as just submitting an idea, such as “Designing for the IoT.” We could try that but I do know it is much more efficient for the panel committee to discuss a proposal that has a little bit more meat than just a title. It also helps to have some ideas of the possible panelists. These panelists don’t need to be confirmed, they can just suggestions about who might best lead a sparkling discussion. If you have a cool idea and don’t want to spend the time, just send the idea to me or contact panel chair Valeria Bertaccio. For those who don’t know Valeria, she is super easy to work with and open to fresh ideas. As you know from an earlier blog about the pavilion, there is no need to submit pavilion panels through the DAC call for contribution process. Again, you can simply contact me. After my fiasco on the Portland freeways, maybe we need a panel on using EDA technology to improve traffic flow or at least predict gridlock on the roads. This shouldn’t be a stretch as our industry is already full of so many traffic-related algorithms, albeit usually related to networks and packets instead of cars.

Now, let’s introduce you to Valeria. She is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. Her research interests are in the area of design correctness, with emphasis on digital system reliability, post-silicon and runtime validation, and hardware-security assurance. Valeria joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 2003, after being in the Advanced Technology Group of Synopsys for four years as a core developer of Vera and Magellan.

During the Winter of 2012, she was on sabbatical at the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology in Ethiopia.

Valeria is the author of three books on design errors and validation. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1998 and 2003, respectively; and a Computer Engineering degree (“Dottore in Ingegneria”) summa cum laude from the University of Padova, Italy in 1995. Valeria is the recipient of the IEEE CEDA Early Career Award, NSF CAREER award, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research’s Young Investigator award, the IBM Faculty Award and the Vulcans Education Excellence Award from the University of Michigan.

Valeria loves to travel to warm places around the globe and to scuba dive in tropical waters.