RESUME

 

CLIFFORD B. GERHARD, P.E.

 

Cliff Gerhard is a licensed Professional Engineer (California) and is currently Director of E-M Designs’ Electrical Engineering Group.   

 

Cliff has more than 20 years of technical experience in Electrical Engineering.  He has produced designs used in medical instruments, spacecraft, aircraft, automobiles, motorcycles, emergency vehicles, industrial control, computer products, test equipment, telephony, communications, consumer products, and toys.

 

His management experience includes running a successful small business and managing multiple departments in a corporate environment. 

 

SPECIALTIES

 

Analog Circuit Design              Biopotential Monitoring Circuits

                                                Amplifier Circuits / Filters

                                                Power Supply Circuits

                                                DC to DC Converters / Battery Chargers / Motor Control

                                                Data Acquisition - ADC and DAC, Multiplexer Circuits

                                                Audio / Video

 

Digital Circuit Design               Data Communications

                                                Discrete Logic

                                                Programmable Logic

 

Microprocessor                       Microchip PIC Types

                                                Atmel AVR

                                                Motorola 68HC Types

                                                Philips / Intel 8031/8051 Types

                                                                               

Software Experience              Schematic Capture – Protel, OrCAD, Schema, HiWIRE

PCB Layout – Protel, Mentor (Veribest), PADs, Tango, HiWIRE

Mechanical – Solidworks, AutoCAD

Analog and Digital Circuit Simulations – MicroCap (SPICE), MathCAD

 

EDUCATION

 

WEST COAST UNIVERSITY, Los Angeles, CA.

 

Cliff completed his requirements at night, while working full time, and graduated with honors obtaining the following ABET accredited degree in 1990:

                                                                             

Bachelor of Science in Engineering

Option in Electrical Engineering

(magna cum laude)

 

Cliff passed the California Engineer in Training (E.I.T.) exam on his first attempt in 1991.  He successfully petitioned the board to allow him to take the Professional Engineers License Exams (P.E.) early (normally 4 years of experience is required after obtaining the E.I.T. exam) and then took the P.E. exam in 1993 and passed on his first attempt. In the 1993 exam, 28% of those who took the test received a passing score.

  

 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

 

May 2001 to Present

E-M Designs, Inc.                                                         Dana Point, CA

Director – Electrical Engineering Group

 

In May of 2001, Gerhard Engineering, Inc. was purchased by E-M Designs, Inc. and became E-M Designs, Inc. - EE Group.  At that time Cliff left his position at CMD Technology to take the position of Director – EE Group.  He left on good terms and in fact, CMD was one of the new groups first customers.

 

Cliff’s responsibilities include Electrical Engineering and management of the group.  Cliff has been the lead Engineer on several very interesting and challenging projects.  The following are some examples:

 

Amusement Park Attractions – Several Multi Vehicle Remote Control Systems.  Systems consisted of up to 21 Helm stations, a central RF transmitter (900MHz), and 21 Decoder / Receiver boards mounted in the vehicles. Cliff personally designed the entire system including the system architecture, RF design, communication protocols, analog and digital circuit designs, Microcontroller hardware and firmware, and Printed Circuit board layouts. 

 

Emergency Vehicle Siren - 200 Watt, Dual Sound with High Frequency Switching Audio Power Amplifier.

The system consisted of a high power switching DC/DC converter with custom magnetics (125kHz) and a two channel (100 Watt each) switching audio power amplifier.  Thermal management was one of the greatest challenges for this design.  Cliff was a member of the design team and was responsible for the microcontroller hardware and initial firmware design, analog circuitry, thermal design, and PCB layouts.   

Automated Test System – Test Station for Component used in National Missile Defense Program.  This system consisted of a rackmount industrial computer with a National Instruments Data Acquisition System and a custom electronics rack that was capable of controlling 15 servo actuators for burn in tests.  The systems were also used to automate acceptance testing and documentation of the test results.  Cliff was responsible for all of the custom electronic circuit design, power sub-system, electronics card-cage design, and printed circuit board layout.    

 

Medical Electronics – Cliff has participated in multiple research programs for a local medical electronics company. He has been personally responsible for the design of EEG monitoring circuits that push the state of the art in tolerance to high electrode impedances.  The latest project is the first production version of this EEG technology.  In addition to hardware design of REG, EEG, and EKG circuits, he was also involved with system evaluations during clinical tests in the operating room and neo-natal ICU facilities of several local hospitals.  Cliff has completed other designs relating to these systems that include Photo Plethysmograph, Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), and Impedance Pneumograph circuits.

 

Central Processing Module for Blood Analysis Equipment – This digital board was a replacement for the company’s existing board which had become obsolete due to parts availability.  The design had to be backwards compatible with old systems in the field and take advantage of any benefits offered by new technologies (improve performance, lower manufacturing costs (reduce parts count), increased test coverage).  Cliff was responsible for hardware design and printed circuit board layout.

 

Battery Replacement for the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINGARS).  These devices were small AC/DC power supplies that were packaged to emulate the Lithium Batteries used on the SINGARS radios.  The device is to be used when AC power is available to save the expense of batteries and disposal.  This was a very compact package that also included a small Sealed Lead Acid Battery to supply the radio in the event of short duration power failures.  This has evolved into a family of products that fit several different radios.    

 

  

March 1999 to May 2001

CMD Technology, Inc.                                      Irvine, CA

Technical Manager – Power and Packaging Group

 

Business slowed at Gerhard Engineering and in 1999, and Cliff took a full time position as Director of the Power and Packaging Group at CMD Technologies, Inc. In this position, he was responsible for managing several Mechanical Engineers and PCB Layout personnel as well as being personally responsible for all Analog / Power Circuit designs for the company’s line of storage products.  He also kept Gerhard Engineering alive by working there in the evenings and weekends. 

 

CMD is a leading manufacturer of RAID Controllers and Semiconductors.  Cliff was personally responsible for all of the analog circuit design for the Storage Products Group.  These designs included the Power System Architecture for a number of Raid Controllers.  The circuit designs included hot swap circuitry, multiple high frequency switching DC to DC Converters, and battery backup systems.

 

The following are some design examples:

 

Hot swappable power subsystem for OEM RAID products – Cliff was responsible for the design of Power distribution and redundancy on the company’s Titan and Dakota RAID Products.

 

RAID controller board - 5 power zones (+5V, +3.3v, +2.5V, +1.85V, +1.5V), high frequency switching DC/DC Regulator circuits, soft start and current limit circuitry, power sequencing circuitry, power zone monitoring circuitry, on board power supply margin testing circuitry. 

 

NiMH Battery Subsystem – This battery back up scheme was intended to supply power to DIMM memories.  The high-speed memories require a large supply current (1.5A) when operating and a small current when in standby mode.  The system required that a large amount of memory be transferred prior to a system shutdown or power failure.   The memories required a “glitch free” transition to battery power at the time of power fail or brown out.  This was accomplished using parallel switching regulators. A low power regulator supplied the current in standby mode and a high power regulator for the normal operation.  The standby regulator was always connected and current limited and the high power regulator was connected with a MOSFET switch.  A microcontroller based charging circuit was also part of this design.

  

Cliff was in charge of the PCB layout Group (3 PCB designers).  He was responsible for the selection of the company’s PCB Layout tools (Veribest/Mentor). 

 

CMD’s PCB designs featured large dense boards, with high pitch surface mount and BGA packages.  High frequency interfaces including LVD SCSI, 1GHz Fibre Channel, ATA, IDE, and 100-Base T Ethernet. Cliff was responsible for the design PCB stackups to handle the complex impedance control and signal integrity issues.

 

Cliff was also managed the Mechanical Engineering Group (2-3 Engineers).  The Mechanical Engineering Group was responsible for the design of custom sheet metal and machined parts for the company’s line of storage products.  

 

 

March 1984 to May 2001

Gerhard Engineering, Inc.                                           Mission Viejo, CA

President / Consulting Engineer

 

In 1984 Cliff left Data Chron because the demands of the job were making it difficult for him to make adequate progress towards his degree.  He joined Gerhard Engineering (his fathers consulting business) and continued taking classes at night.  Over this period, Gerhard Engineering grew from a one-man company working out of a spare bedroom, to a peak of 8 employees (5 Engineers) and two dedicated facilities.  

The following list is a sample of some of the more important projects Cliff has been responsible for during his time at Gerhard Engineering: