IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Summer 2018 - 98

Fun FACTS ABOuT DAnIeL
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Daniel (far right), with his wife, Maria (far left), and children Sara (second from left), Julia
(center), and David, at Perkins Hall in Cambridge, where Daniel and Maria met.

Daniel (second from right) with his wife and children after an a cappella performance by his
daughter Sara at Harvard College.

applications, and solutions department.
His first project was to work on a battery-powered radio-frequency identification (RFID) IC, which quickly turned
into working on a field-powered RFID IC.
"This experience was like being thrown
into the deep end of a pool," he said. "I
had to do everything from setting up
Cadence to picking a foundry and actually doing the air interface protocol design and front-end design."
This proved to be a challenge, since
Daniel's background was far from the

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type of work he was doing. However,
one of the crucial lessons he learned
was to listen to his colleagues very
carefully; on many occasions, their suggestions saved the project. When RFID
technology was eventually licensed
to an acquirer, Daniel joined the communication circuits and systems team
and learned about serializer/deserializer (SerDes) circuits and the phaselocked loops (PLL) that helped drive the
SerDes. "I was climbing a steep learning
curve," Daniel said about his new posi-

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

Daniel is a big fan of science fiction.
Daniel loves crossword puzzles and
has a knack for easily identifying spelling mistakes in everyday life.
Daniel does not like heights or the
cold.

tion, "but, yet again, there were many
strong colleagues and great managers
to help me."
In 2000, he was asked to manage the
mixed-signal IC team, which focused
on high-speed input/output (I/O). In
2009, Daniel became the senior manager of the communication circuits
and systems team, where he added
mm-wave design and other topics
to his area of responsibility. In his
new management roles, he was able
to create opportunities to work with
internal and external commercial and
external government clients.
Daniel has contributed to many
rewarding technologies in his field.
"The RFID technology project that
was my first at IBM was very exciting,"
he said. The hard work paid off, and
the research design was successfully
transitioned to a commercial product. Daniel said that every time any
of the research concepts that he or his
team works on are adopted in a server
or application-specific-IC product,
whether it be anything from digital
PLLs to integrated regulators to high
performance I/Os, it is a great moment
for him. Recently, he and his wireless team collaborated with Ericsson.
The paper describing the mm-wave
phase array chip from this collaboration was selected as the recipient for
the 2017 Lewis Winner Outstanding
Paper Award. "IBM Research continues to be a very exciting place where I
am always challenged to think in new
ways, learn, and grow," Daniel said.
Daniel holds more than 75 patents
and has authored or coauthored more
than 75 publications. He has received
a number of awards, including the
Beatrice Winner Award for Editorial
Excellence at the IEEE International
Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC)

IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Summer 2018

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