Just Ask Heidi: The Most Rewarding Part of the Job

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

First, we asked you to send in your questions for Happy Holden, Joe Fjelstad, Eric Camden, John Mitchell, and Tara Dunn in our “Just Ask” series. Now, it’s Heidi Barnes’s turn! Heidi is a senior signal and power integrity engineer at Keysight Technologies. She has written over 20 papers on SI and PI, and she is an active member in developing the new IEEE P370 standard involving interconnect S-parameter quality after fixture removal. Heidi has been awarded five patents and a NASA Silver Snoopy award (each Silver Snoopy pin flies on a space mission first), and she was named DesignCon's 2017 Engineer of the Year. We hope you enjoy “Just Ask Heidi.”

Q: What is the most rewarding part of your job, and your career overall?

A: Finding an elegant solution to an engineering problem and then sharing with colleagues through the publication of a technical paper. Engineering tools like PathWave ADS make it possible to look at an electronic engineering problem from the simplest rules of thumb to the complexity of full electromagnetic (EM) simulation. In the process of looking at a problem from more than one direction, it is possible to identify the critical parameters and develop a more elegant solution. Conferences like DesignCon make it possible to publish papers that not only document the engineering solution, but also provide the flexibility to go into the details of applying the solution to real-world applications.

To submit your questions for Heidi, click here.