EW BrightSparks 2023: Vasiliki Xiradaki, University of Birmingham / EnSilica

Now in its sixth year of awards, EW BrightSparks sees Electronics Weekly highlight and celebrate some of the brightest and most talented young engineers in the UK today.

Here, in our series on the latest EW BrightSparks of 2023, we highlight Vasiliki Xiradaki, a student at the University of Birmingham and a Digital Design Engineer at EnSilica.

Achievements

Vasiliki started studying Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Birmingham a few months after arriving in the UK from Greece. She pushed herself to adapt to the new educational system and culture as soon as possible, while working and studying at the same time she told us.

She is justifiably proud of the fact that, less than two years later, she received multiple internship offers from semiconductor companies and a scholarship from the UK Electronic Skills Foundations (UKESF). She also received excellent grades in most of her modules at university.

Note that to support herself financially, she was working two jobs alongside her studies.

It was after her second year at University that Vasiliki had a very successful 13-month placement with EnSilica, an ASIC design company.

Throughout her placement she encountered various aspects of IC design. For example, after she completed some initial training, she was put in the company’s satellite communications chip project, where she got started with directed block verification. She began further developing existing block-level testcases, focusing on testing the internal AMBA connectivity of the System-on-Chip (SoC).

Upon completion, she progressed to writing top level testcases, testing the data path from data converters through the on-chip capture logic. It was through these tasks that she became very experienced with SystemVerilog, directed testbench design, Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) and constrained random verification, all of which were new to her at the start of her placement.

Following on from the verification tasks, she became involved in module design and was put in the company’s Satellite-On-The-Move (SOTM) chip project, one with very demanding complexity and timelines, she told us.

“Along with the design technical lead, we created the block-level specification, and I was able to develop the synthesizable SystemVerilog to capture the functional requirements of the module. I was also required to deliver a directed SystemVerilog testbench, that tested as many functional paths as possible to ensure the desired performance was achieved.”

“Additionally, I used Cadence’s linting tools to ensure correct coding methods were used in my design, and created an optimal clocking system for the block which I tested using Mentor’s Clock Domain Crossing (CDC) tools.”

Along with these verification and design tasks, Vasiliki was also involved with internal tool scripting flow development. For example, she was writing BASH, Python and TCL scripts to help improve internal company flows and systems and integrate new tools, as well as using them as extra means of testing her designs.

Vasiliki was happy to share that during her placement, her hard work paid off and she had the confidence to request to be made responsible for tasks requiring increasing levels of expertise. This was rewarded when the company made an unconditional offer to re-join after her graduation. Additionally, for during her final year, she was offered a part-time position in the company, working as a front-end design engineer.

A very successful placement, and she has now entered her final year at university. She has decided to expand her skills by doing her final year project on analogue design, as opposed to the digital design tasks she did during her placement year.

“I believe that by having a mixture of analogue and digital design skills I will be able to offer more unique and optimal solutions in tasks I might be assigned to in the future, and it is also a mixture of knowledge that not many engineers have. Therefore, my final year project will be the design of a high-performance Digital-to-Analogue (DAC) converter for a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications chip.”

Community

Vasiliki told us she has always been interested in volunteering and social activities, ever since she came to the UK and started studying. She has particularly aimed to be an advocate for women in engineering and for engineers from diverse backgrounds.

She has participated in many outreach activities across different age groups. For example, in the past year, she has visited more than ten schools joining careers fairs, STEM panels and participating in mock engineering interviews with hundreds of students.

She told us how she had helped students, and parents, through these events – informing them about electronic engineering as a career path, how electronics exist all around us, and also raising awareness about the huge gap of female engineering professionals that exists in the UK compared to the rest of Europe.

“Additionally, to peak the student’s interest even more, I often bring with me test chips from my company as well as working testing boards to do live demonstrations for the students,” Vasiliki told us. “Due to the enthusiasm I have shown in previous events, I was also selected by the UKESF to participate in the Academy Achiever’s #BeMeDigitalInclusion charity STEM event which is targeted at black girls from vulnerable backgrounds.”

In addition to these events, she was also a member of the Women’s Panel in EnSilica, offering suggestions on how to attract more female employees to the company and organising additional outreach events to local schools in Oxford where the company is based.

Finally, Vasiliki was a member of TechWorks’ Women in Engineering Society. This involved participating in conversations with other female engineers, and also discussing and exchanging suggestions about important issues that need to be improved in engineering workplaces for women, such as maternity leave and the menopause.

“Volunteering and outreach work will always be my priority as I realise the importance of having diverse role models that inspire the newer generations, which is something I did not have growing up, and is something I aspire to be.”