Dr. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli

An academic researcher, teacher, entrepreneur, technical advisor and business man, he is a co-founder of the two largest companies in the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) space: Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys, Inc. He is a world-renowned authority on all aspects of integrated circuit and system design such as numerical algorithms, circuit simulation, verification, layout, logic synthesis and distributed system analysis, he was instrumental in bringing EDA technology to market and ensuring its commercial success. Born and raised in Milan, Italy, he attended liceo classico, studying ancient Greek and Latin. He received his Engineering degree (a "laurea") summa cum laude from the Politecnico di Milano (Milan Polytechnic) in 1971. The youngest person to become an Associate Professor there to date, he specialized in Network Theory. In 1975 he left Milan Polytechnic to take a position as Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He returned to Italy at the end of his term, but was asked to return. So in 1976 he returned to teach a basic Network Theory class. In 1983, he co-founded SDA Systems–one of two companies that merged to form Cadence Design Systems. In 1986, he went on to help found Synopsys. During the 1990s, he developed the foundations of “platform-based design,” a comprehensive design and analysis methodology for electronic systems. He received the 1995 IEEE Graduate Teaching Award, the 2001 Phil Kaufman Award for his pioneering contributions to EDA from the Electronic Design Automation Consortium. He also received the 2009 IEEE/RSE Wolfson James Clerk Maxwell Award. He presently serves on the Board of Directors of Cadence Design Systems Inc., where he is Chair of the Technology Committee. An advisor to leading companies such as Intel, United Technologies, General Motors and Pirelli, In 1983, he became IEEE Fellow and in 1998 he was elected to member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He continues to serve on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, and currently holds the Edgar L. and Harold H. Buttner Chair of Electrical Engineering. He has published 800 papers and 15 books in the areas of EDA, design methodologies, control, hybrid systems and system-level design.