Accellera Technical Excellence Award

Congratulations Tom Fitzpatrick, Recipient of the 2019 Technical Excellence Award

Tom Fitzpatrick is the recipient of the eighth annual Accellera Technical Excellence Award. He was presented the award at DVCon U.S. on Monday, February 25, 2019 during the Accellera Day luncheon.

Tom is a noted verification evangelist and is being honored for his many years of dedication to the advancement of Accellera standards. He has been a key contributor to the evolution and adoption of the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) standard, Verilog and SystemVerilog standards and the development and launch of the Portable Test and Stimulus Standard 1.0 (PSS). 

"Tom is a passionate verification technologist who has been at the forefront of ushering new languages and methods into industry practice for decades," stated Martin Barnasconi, Accellera Technical Committee Chair. "He has been involved since the very early days of Verilog, guiding it to SystemVerilog within Accellera. He helped to bring an industry-unifying verification methodology to the global community of verification engineers, now known as UVM. In recent years, Tom has been one of the key drivers behind the development of the Portable Test and Stimulus Standard (PSS). Tom’s contributions to the advancement of industry standards and his technical leadership need to be recognized. He is well-deserving of the 2019 Accellera Technical Excellence Award," Barnasconi added.

"I am honored to receive this award from Accellera, and humbled to be recognized for doing work that I think is very important for our industry," said Fitzpatrick, Strategic Verification Architect at Mentor, a Siemens Business. "I have been blessed to work for many of the companies responsible for the creation and advancement of Accellera standards, including Mentor, which has helped pioneer portable stimulus technology since 2004, and led its standardization effort that began in 2014. I am gratified to have played a part in advancing the state of the art in verification over the years, and look forward to continued progress and collaboration with colleagues and peers throughout the industry."

Read the press release >

About the Technical Excellence Award

Accellera Systems Initiative wishes to recognize the outstanding achievements of its working group members by selecting outstanding contributors to our standards development process as recipients of the Accellera Systems Initiative Technical Excellence Award.

This annual award recognizes major contributions to the development of Accellera standards. Examples of such contributions may include leadership in standardization of new technologies, assuring achievement of standards development goals, and identifying opportunities to better serve the needs of the community through standards.

The recipient of the Technical Excellence Award is recognized at DVCon U.S.

Eligibility

Any member of an Accellera Working Group is eligible for the award.

Candidates can be nominated by Working Group chairs and are endorsed and selected by participants of the Accellera Technical Excellence Award Committee, which is a subcommittee of the Technical Committee.

Nominations must include the following information:

• The candidate's name, email address, and affiliation
• Brief description of the specific achievements that justify the award (supporting documents are optional)
• Why those achievements are important to the industry
• Your name, email address, and affiliation

For more information about our awards programs, contact us.

Past Recipients