Systems Engineering with an Aviators ”Mission” Mindset (Pt 1)

The EEcosystem Podcast

Military Prime Technical Fellow and Air Force Pilot, Ben Dannan, discusses his unique perspective on engineering. Both his time in the air and his time on the bench have worked together to make him a more effective systems engineer. (This is part 1 of a 3-part series)

2:30 Ben’s current role and work at NGC, and his career path that included his formal education, to engineering complex mil/aero systems and ultimately led him to join the Air Force active reserves while he continued to concurrently work as an EE.

6:15 Flight experience in peace and combat, what planes he was trained on and how that ultimately lead to his role as Air Commando that supports special operations teams.

9:42 How Ben became a Technical Fellow at NGC (he didn’t ask for it!) and how he thinks all of his outside projects helped to qualify him for this honor. In short, it takes a lot of hard work and Grit.

11:46 Background in his first DesignCon paper and the value of excellent mentors.

13:39 How and why Ben became a Keysight ADS Certified Expert. The importance of hard work and the value of having the ability to do end-to-end simulation.

15:30 How working on the ground as a civilian engineer in Iraq (with BAE) inspired him to join the Air Force Reserves in order to become an operator and gain tactical awareness that informed his engineering work. 20:50 Working with Lee Ritchey on an incredibly hard EMC problem. The problem of delineations of engineering disciplines and how the “gap” often causes unintended consequences.

24:36 The problem of ignoring board effects on your system, and why whole system simulation is critical

Links: Link to Ben’s publications page on his website

Signal Integrity Journal page for Ben's publications

Ben Dannan LinkedIn Profile

Steve Sandler’s Presentation “The Unfortunate State of Power Integrity in Space Systems”

Slide Deck YouTube video presentation

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