When Professor Firooz Aflatnouni started at Penn over thirteen years ago, he wanted to arm graduates with the skills they need to thrive in the semiconductor industry.
The above ultimately motivated Aflatouni to design and teach the ESE 5730 Chips-design and ESE 5750 Chips-measurement courses. But like all novel innovations, Aflatouni’s plan took years to implement. In fact, designing the chips’ courses represented Aflatnouni’s final step in a multi-year plan to revamp the department’s circuit’s courses. Aflatnouni’s approach responded to what the ESE Department then offered from its circuits courses to what his contacts in industry said they needed when hiring graduates.
“I took a top-down approach to teaching and redesigning the circuits courses,” said Aflatouni on Monday, May 4th. Organized by ESE CETLI Fellow, A.J.Geers, Monday’s discussion represented the final talk devised by Geers, a doctoral student in Aflatouni’s EPM lab.
In redesigning the department’s circuits courses, Aflatnouni “went from the very last class they needed: ESE 6720 Integrated Communication Systems, to ESE 5720 Analog Integrated Circuits, to ESE 3190 Fundamentals of Solid-State Circuits to ESE 2150 Electrical Circuits and Systems.” By redesigning the above courses, Aflatouni was confident that the department’s students had the background they needed for the two Chip Design courses.
During the above timeframe, the ESE Department also hired new faculty to teach integrated circuits courses such as Professor Troy Olsson and Professor Tania Khanna, who added their own expertise to revamping the circuits curriculum, Aflatouni noted. Later, the department added Professor Lei Gu and Professor Robert Radway.
As the discussion opened to questions, Aflatouni explained that the ESE 5730 Chips Design course was intentionally scheduled to start in the spring semester. “Students tape-out the chip from start to finish,” Aflatouni said, adding the chips are sent for fabrication and packaging over the summer. When students returned for the ESE 5750 Chips-measurements course in the fall, “they designed their PCBs before measuring.” In response to a question on re-arranging the schedule—or running the first course in the fall and the second in the spring– “it would not work because it wouldn’t give companies enough time to fabricate the chip,” Aflatouni explained.
According to Aflatouni, 100 percent of the students enrolled in ESE 5730 successfully designed chips. About fifty percent successfully measured their chips, Aflatouni said, expressing optimism that this will improve in time. That said, Aflatuni’s surveys show that students who have completed the courses and graduated report finding 100% employment.
As for TA support, Aflatouni emphasized, “PhD students are the best. The TA’s need to be experts in circuits.”Learn more about Professor Aflatouni’s work here