Co-founder of the first company in Colombia to offer engineering services in integrated circuit design.

Lecturer of : Fundamentals of Analog Circuits , Communication Systems, Signals and Systems and Microelectronics courses for junior EE students. Verification of the assignments and final projects.

During my stay in NXP Eindhoven, I worked in three different projects:1. Integrated Hall-Sensor: Layout, integration and sign-off of a protoype of a chip that uses the hall effect to sense current. This project was focused on layout and chip finishing. The design was already done, but it was desired to arrange the main blocks in a different way, to test a new approach on a previous designed hall sensor. The chip is ready to tape-out.2. Time-Domain ADC: Verification, improvement, layout and sign-off of an ADC protoype using a time-domain principle. The design was done previously by some other NXP intern, but still there were some bugs that needed to be addressed. Improvements were done in the final design. The chip is ready to tape-out.3. Capacitive-matrix Sensor: A capacitive matrix sensor for particle detection applications (e.g., gas sensing, bio-sensing, etc.) was proposed, with very promising initial simulations. Although there was not enough time to complete the entire design, 80% of a read-out circuit of a capacitive-to-digital converter with a sigma-delta core was done. Initial simulations across corners, show the promising of this architecture, outperforming previous design speed by x76.8 and with lower power consumption at same resolution and dynamic range target.

Consultant at IMEC

I was involved in a project where the larger goal was to create a prosthetic hand system that moves and provides sensation like a natural hand. Our work was related to sensory feedback, especially from the hand. This is vitally important for many functions, and the peripheral nerve stimulation seeks to create a sensory experience so rich and vibrant that users would want to wear their prostheses full time. Without this feedback, even the most advanced prosthetic limbs remain numb to users, a factor that impairs the limbs’ effectiveness and their wearers’ willingness to use them. We designed a chip that can be implanted in the remaining peripheral nerves of the amputee and can stimulate or record from these intact fibers. My specific task was primarily related to design the current sources necessary for stimulation.

As a member of the Ultrasound ASICs & Energy-Efficient Sensors Group, guided by Michiel Pertijs, I was involved in the research of CMOS-compatible CO2 sensors. The goal is to develop CO2 sensors that can be fabricated in standard CMOS technology with minimum post-processing steps, so as to enable low-cost CO2 sensing in home- and building-automation applications. The sensors that we work on measure the CO2-dependent thermal conductivity of ambient air, by measuring the temperature rise of a small on-chip suspended heater. Since the changes in thermal conductivity, and hence the changes in temperature, are very small (at the ppm level), the readout of this kind of sensors is extremely challenging. Both the power dissipated in the heater as well its temperature need to be measured very accurately.I developed an IC that aims to do exactly that. Starting from a relatively broad problem statement, I managed to come up with a concrete system architecture that exploits a high-resolution ADC developed previously in our lab, to which I added a precision front-end circuit that enables the measurement of the voltage across the sensor and the current through it, so as to be able to calculate the sensor's resistance and power dissipation. My chip also measures ambient temperature using on-chip bipolar transistors. I carefully analyzed the errors sources in this architecture and constructed a Matlab model to predict the performance that can be obtained. The circuit was implemented in a 0.16um CMOS technology provided by NXP Semiconductors, the company that is our research partner in this project.Also, I constructed a complex measurement setup to experimentally verify the performance of the chip. This involved the development of Matlab and FPGA code to automate the measurements and to control the climate chamber in which the chip was tested. Using this setup, It was demonstrated that the chip is fully functional, and to a large extent achieves the expected performance.

Responsibilities: + Verication and improvement of Analog blocks. + Verilog-A/AMS modeling (specially the modeling of a Sigma-Delta ADC). + Design of a VOLTAGE RAMP-UP PROTECTION (used in a Bandgap voltage reference). Co-author of a US-Patent (US8729951 B1).