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DesignCon 2020 Honors Istvan Novak as 2020 Engineer of the Year
January 30, 2020 | DesignConEstimated reading time: 2 minutes
DesignCon, the nation’s largest event for chip, board, and systems design engineers, today announced Istvan Novak, Principal Signal and Power Integrity Engineer, Samtec, as the 2020 winner of its prestigious Engineer of the Year Award. The Engineer of the Year Award recognizes the best of the best in engineering and new product advancements at the chip, board, or system level. Each year, the award winner receives a $1,000 grant or scholarship to present to the educational institution of their choice. Novak has selected to donate to the Radio Club of the Technical University of Budapest.
Finalists for the Engineer of the year award were selected by the editors of Design News and DesignCon staff, and the winner was voted by the DesignCon community. The award was presented to Novak at DesignCon 2020, which celebrated its 25th edition this week at the Santa Clara Convention Center. To learn more about the award, please visit: designcon.com/engineer-of-the-year-award.
“Novak has made groundbreaking contributions to the DesignCon and wider signalintegrity/power integrity community,” said Naomi Price, Conference Content Director for DesignCon, Informa Markets. “We are proud to honor his impactful design work and dedication towards mentoring early-career engineers both on his own and as part of DesignCon’s new early-career and new author mentoring program.”
Novak has single-handedly moved the needle in the test and test measurement industry by developing new instruments and methods of measurement. Furthermore, his generosity in mentorship of early-career engineers to ensure qualified engineers move up the ranks has been inspiring to the DesignCon community as-a-whole.
“DesignCon has become a worldwide destination, but to me, it feels like a family,” said Novak. “To be honored among my fellow distinguished peers is such a privilege—I believe all finalists are truly deserving of the winning title.”
About Istvan Novak
Novak is a Principal Signal and Power Integrity Engineer at Samtec, working on advanced signal and power integrity designs. Prior, he was a Distinguished Engineer at SUN Microsystems, later Oracle. Novak has worked on new technology development, advanced power distribution and signal integrity design, and validation methodologies for SUN's successful workgroup server families. Additionally, he introduced the industry's first 25um power-ground laminates for large rigid computer boards and worked with component vendors to create a series of low-inductance and controlled-ESR bypass capacitors. Novak as also served as SUN's representative on the Copper Cable and Connector Workgroup of InfiniBand, and was engaged in the methodologies, designs, and characterization of power-distribution networks from silicon to DC-DC converters. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE with twenty-five patents to his name, author of two books on power integrity, teaches signal and power integrity courses, and maintains a popular SI/PI website.
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