Introduction
Before I depart to New York in a week, in this post, I would like to tell you a bit more about Melexis, the sponsor of my grant and my five-week-long internship there past month. I would also like to thank Melexis again for making this experience possible. They are big supporters of STEM, which is why they invest in the engineering students. It’s great such a leading Belgian company wants to give back to the universities so that the local students receive opportunities they otherwise could only dream of.
Melexis
Melexis is a global supplier of micro-electronic semiconductor solutions, mostly active in the automotive industry. Their products not only increase the safety and efficiency of internal combustion engines, but also boost the transition to electric vehicles. On the other hand, they are also active in the alternative mobility, smart appliances, smart buildings, robotics, digital health and many other markets. The figure below from the Belgian newspaper “De Tijd” illustrates their spectrum of chips well.
Fun fact: every car produced last year contains on average 18 chips designed by Melexis and that number is going to increase to over 100 in the near future.
Internship
During July, I was a student analog design engineering intern at Melexis. The goal was to redesign a power supply regulator with very challenging specifications, previously implemented by two separate regulators, in one new regulator to rule them all. The project of course turned out much tougher than it seemed. Next schematic shows the basic structure of a Low-Dropout Regulator:
During the design, I hit many roadblocks, had as many revelations, but when the simulations finally started to yield some positive results, it was amazing to see the hard work all coming together. The final results weren’t perfect (engineering never is) but I am certainly very happy with what was achieved. Seeing the regulator output a stable voltage in some difficult simulations does make it look like the design has
Of course the journey is more important than the destination and in this case, the journey taught me the most I’ve ever learned in five short weeks. The guidance of Vince and Dries always made me look at the problem differently and after a short conversation with them, the solution started showing itself. It really stood out to me that all designers at Melexis had a way more practical approach to the electronics and design process than we learn at university.
I would like to thank everyone at Melexis once again for sharing their experience with me, I really enjoyed the open atmosphere of sharing knowledge and helping each other out. I am sure that my experiences at Columbia will improve my engineering skills even further and the internship was a great preparation for the challenge ahead.
Thank you Vince, Dries, Burak, Jietse, Hans, Stijn and Dina!