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Deirdre serves as the Chief Security Officer for Synopsys. In this role, she works collaboratively to safeguard Synopsys. In addition, she leads efforts to drive industry awareness and enablement for secure design from software to silicon to support our business in EDA, IP and Software Integrity. She previously served as co-general manager of Synopsys’ Design Group, responsible for leading the development and deployment of our physical design, implementation, and analog/mixed-signal product lines. Deirdre has held a number of positions at Synopsys since joining the company in 1987, including leadership roles in customer engagement, applications engineering, sales, and marketing. She earned a B.S.E.E. from Brown University and an M.S.E.E. from UC Berkeley. In 2001, Deirdre was a recipient of the YWCA Tribute to Women and Industry (TWIN) Award and the Marie R. Pistilli Women in EDA Achievement Award. Ms. Hanford served as the Chairman of American Electronics Association in 2008. She currently chairs Brown University’s Engineering Advisory Committee and serves on the Engineering Advisory Board for UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering. Deirdre also serves on the Board of Directors of Cirrus Logic, Inc.
Kenneth M. (Ken) Butler is a Test Systems Architect in the Central Analog Engineering Group at Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas. He has been with TI for over 36 years and has worked in the areas of design for testability, product reliability, analog product and test engineering, design automation, and data analytics. Ken has a BS from Oklahoma State University and an MS and PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, all in electrical engineering. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Golden Core member of the IEEE Computer Society, and a Senior Member of the ACM.
Riccardo Mariani is widely recognized as an expert in functional safety and integrated circuit reliability. In his current role as VP of Industry Safety at NVIDIA, he is responsible for driving safety alignment across NVIDIA’s automotive and embedded business units. To this end, he is responsible for developing cohesive safety strategies and cross-segment safety processes, architecture, and products that can leveraged across NVIDIA’s AI-based hardware and software platforms. Prior to NVIDIA, he was chief functional safety technologist at Intel Corporation, where he oversaw strategies and technologies for IoT applications that require functional safety, high reliability and performance, such as autonomous driving, transportation and industrial systems. Riccardo Mariani is First Vice President for Standards Activities of IEEE Computer Society, chair of IEEE P2851 standard on safety analyses interoperability and also chair of the IEEE initiative on Reliable, Safe, Secure and Time Deterministic Intelligent Systems. Mariani spent the bulk of his career as CTO of Yogitech, an industry leader in functional safety technologies. Before co-founding the Italian company in 2000, he was technical director at Aurelia Microelettronica, where his responsibilities included leading high-reliability topics in projects with CERN in Geneva. A prolific author and respected inventor in the functional safety field, Mariani has contributed to multiple industry standards efforts throughout his career, including leading the ISO 26262-11 part specific to semiconductors. He has also won the SGS-Thomson Award and the Enrico Denoth Award for his engineering achievements. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering and a Ph.D. in microelectronics from the University of Pisa in Italy.
Brady Benware is the Vice President and General Manager of the Silicon Lifecycle Solutions group at Mentor, A Siemens Business, which is part of the Siemens Digital Industries Software Xcelerator portfolio. In this role, Brady is responsible for the Tessent product line which includes design-for-test, yield, functional safety, and the embedded analytics solutions from recently acquired UltraSoC. Brady is a 20+ year veteran of the industry, has coauthored over 80 papers, been awarded 20 patents and holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering.