-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueLevel Up Your Design Skills
This month, our contributors discuss the PCB design classes available at IPC APEX EXPO 2024. As they explain, these courses cover everything from the basics of design through avoiding over-constraining high-speed boards, and so much more!
Opportunities and Challenges
In this issue, our expert contributors discuss the many opportunities and challenges in the PCB design community, and what can be done to grow the numbers of PCB designers—and design instructors.
Embedded Design Techniques
Our expert contributors provide the knowledge this month that designers need to be aware of to make intelligent, educated decisions about embedded design. Many design and manufacturing hurdles can trip up designers who are new to this technology.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Altium Invests in Future Designers
April 13, 2022 | Andy Shaughnessy, Design007 MagazineEstimated reading time: 3 minutes
While at IPC APEX EXPO, I stopped by the Altium booth to visit with Rea Callender, vice president of education at Altium. Rea shared information about the company’s recent design competition for students around the world, as well as a new curriculum that is drawing interest from some unique locations.
Andy Shaughnessy: Rea, I know you’ve had a busy week at IPC APEX EXPO. Tell us about it.
Rea Callender: Our company is really interested in supporting the next generation of electronics designers. We feel that it’s our social responsibility to support these young students to move forward and get them ready for their careers by offering them free tools and curriculum that teaches them how to create printed circuit boards.
Shaughnessy: That’s good.
Callender: We want to share our core competencies with these students. We have had several students come through our booth and we’re showing our free curriculum tools called Upverter Education1, which teaches students how to create printed circuit boards from zero to manufacturing if they didn’t know anything about creating a printed circuit board. Once they go through our curriculum, they’d know how to create a printed circuit board. There are also professional tools called Upverter and Upverter Modular that allow them to create the boards and designs.
Recently, Altium partnered with Arduino and IPC Education Foundation to hold #PCBeTheChange 20212, a global student design competition, where you can see the winning boards around the booth. We had almost 90 teams join from both high school and college divisions and their task was to go through our curriculum and use our tools to address some environmental issues locally.
There were three winners in the high school division and three winners from the college division, and because it was a global event, it was really competitive. We had teams from Guatemala, France, Afghanistan, Australia, and Greece, as well as many from the U.S. and Canada. Those who entered addressed a local environmental issue and then created a board using Upverter. The first prize winners received $1,500, with $750 for second place, and $500 for third place.
One of the most notable teams we’ve been working with has been the Afghan Dreamers, which won second place. This is a team that has been on the news. The team is from Afghanistan and had to evacuate. They moved to Qatar. The parent organization of that team is Digital Citizen Fund, which is based in New York. It brings technology to young women in Afghanistan or who are from there.
That’s how we met the Afghan Dreamers. The team members went through our curriculum, learned to use our tools, created a printed circuit board, and won second place. And we actually have a video3. It’s pretty cool.
Shaughnessy: You all are helping make the world a better place.
Callender: Yes, for sure. We also just launched a new educational curriculum called Altium Education3. These are college-level courses that teach college students how to create printed circuit boards. But in this case, it points to our tool called Altium Designer which is our flagship product. Students get the curriculum and a license for free.
We really want to help students get ready for their future careers. Our goal is to attract students to the world of printed circuit boards. Design technology is an art form. We need people from all walks of life to create printed circuit boards and solve the world’s problems. That’s what this is about.
Shaughnessy: This is your way of reaching young people?
Callender: Yes, reaching out to high school and college students.
Shaughnessy: It’s great having them do community service-type of work that’s not necessarily involved with PCB design.
Callender: Right. We challenged them to solve environmental issues. We launched our curriculum for upper education in high schools in September 2020, and we have more than 7,000 students signed up around the world. A huge percentage of students, interestingly, are from India, so I’m really excited about that.
Shaughnessy: Very good. Great talking with you. Thank you so much.
Callender: Thank you, Andy.
References
Download The Printed Circuit Designer’s Guide to… Design for Manufacturing by David Marrakchi. You can also view other titles in our full I-007eBook library here.
Suggested Items
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
05/03/2024 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007This week’s most important news is strategic—and telling. When one puts together the IPC industry reports, we simply have to include the recent conversation with Shawn DuBravac and Tom Kastner. On the design side, check out the latest “On The Line With…” podcast featuring Brad Griffin from Cadence Design Systems, discussing SI and PI in the realm of intelligent system design.
Synopsys, Samsung Electronics Collaborate to Achieve First Production Tapeout of Flagship Mobile CPU
05/03/2024 | PRNewswireSynopsys, Inc. announced that Samsung Electronics has achieved successful production tapeout for its high-performance mobile SoC design, including flagship CPUs and GPUs, with 300MHz higher performance using Synopsys.ai™ full stack AI-driven EDA suite and a broad portfolio of Synopsys IP on Samsung Foundry's latest Gate-All-Around (GAA) process technologies.
Altair Acquires Research in Flight, Forging a New Path for Aerodynamic Analysis
05/03/2024 | AltairAltair a global leader in computational intelligence, announced it has acquired Research in Flight, maker of FlightStream®, which provides computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software with a large footprint in the aerospace and defense sector and a growing presence in marine, energy, turbomachinery, and automotive applications.
Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2024: Software Solutions for Circuit Board Challenges
05/03/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPONolan Johnson speaks with Will Webb from Aster Technologies about their software solutions for design teams, manufacturing, test engineers, and process engineers. Aster's software addresses the increasing complexities of circuit boards and the need for alternative testing methods.
Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2024: My Role as a Technology Solutions Director
05/02/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPOPeter Tranitz, senior director of technology solutions at IPC, shares insights into his role as the design initiative lead. He details his advocacy work, industry support, and the responsibilities of the design initiative committee. The conversation also covers the revamping of standards, the IPC Design Competition, and the implementation of design rules in software tools.