Aaron McFarland

105 Mulry Drive
Niceville, FL 32578
Tel:(850)678-4074
E-mail: mcfarlan@alumni.ece.utk.edu

Objective

Electrical Engineer with 6+ years experience pursuing a career in digital hardware, systems and/or software design. Experienced with board level PCB design, embedded firmware development, software/GUI development, and system level design. Knowledgeable in board level through system level simulation, test, and analysis. Capable of working in a multidisciplinary environment and interfacing with hardware, software and mechanical design teams along with customer and manufacturing support.

Education

University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee
Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering
May 2001
 Course Emphasis:
ECE 491 - ASIC/VLSI Design
ECE 451/452 - Microprocessors/Microcontrollers/Embedded Systems Design
ECE 472 - Digital Image Processing
ECE 400 - Senior Design Project: Palm Pilot Digital Oscilloscope
Runner Up - Atmel/Circuit Cellar Magazine Design Contest 2001

Okaloosa-Walton Community College
Niceville, Florida
Associate of Arts with Engineering emphasis
May 1997

Work Experience

Siemens Molecular Imaging, Preclinical Solutions, Knoxville, Tennessee
formerly CTI Concorde Mircosystems, LLC, Knoxville, Tennessee
formerly Concorde Mircosystems, Inc., Knoxville, Tennessee
Design Engineer
June 2002 - Present
Design of hardware, software, and firmware for Inveon™ PET/CT/SPECT imaging scanners
Develop and maintain FPGA, CPLD and x86 embedded firmware for microPET™ product line
Oversee layout, first production unit manufacture, and assembly of PCBs
Creation and support of test fixture electronics and software/firmware
Define mechanical requirements and interface with mechanical design team
Define software requirements, interface with and support software development team
Preform analysis and simulation of scanner performance using Matlab/Scilab and IDL data analysis packages
Create manufacturing and customer acceptance test procedures
Project Manager for Inveon™ Dedicated PET post-production improvements
Interface with customers through customer feedback calls, service support and training support
Interface with potential customers through engineering sales support and conference booths
Support customer service in field debugging of hardware, software and firmware related issues

Inductive Signature Technologies, Inc., Knoxville, Tennessee
Product Engineer
May 2001 - June 2002
Design of digital hardware, firmware and software for intelligent transportation systems
Conversion of schematic based FPGA design to VHDL
Migration of VHDL design to newer FPGA vendor and technologies
PCB layout and manufacture; including parts suppliers, manufacture and test houses
Produced internal and external design documentation, datasheets and website content
Field testing and evaluation of new product designs

Manufacturing Technology, Inc., Fort Walton Beach, Florida
Co-Op/Internship
Summer 1999, 2000
VHDL design and simulation for FPGAs and CPLDs
Creation of VHDL and hardware test benches
Writing test documentation and procedures for test station construction
Field testing and debugging of F-15 Aircraft avionics

Other Training

Xilinx' Designing with Multi-Gigabit Serial I/O
Programming Experience: Assembly, Pascal, MatLab/Scilab, IDL, Python, VHDL, and C/C++
Platform Experience: Familiar with Windows, Linux, DOS, PalmOS and wxWidgets/wxPython cross platform software development
Design tool Experience: Protel, PCAD, Synopsys, ModelSim, Altera Quartus/Maxplus2 and Active-HDL
Hardware Experience: 8051, PPC and AVR microcontrollers; Altera, Xilinx, Cypress, Actel, and Lattice FPGAs/CPLDs

Papers Authored/Co-Authored

Primary Author:
A. R. McFarland, D. F. Newport, B. E. Atkins, D. R. Pressley, S. B. Siegel, M. W. Lenox, "A CompactPCI Based Event Routing Subsystem for PET and SPECT Data Acquisition," IEEE NSSMIC 2006 Conference Record, M14-141

Co-Author:
D. Newport, S. B. Siegel, B. K. Swann, B. E. Atkins, A. R. McFarland, D. R. Pressley, M. W. Lenox, R.E. Nutt , "QuickSilver™: a flexible, extensible, and highspeed architecture for multi-modality imaging," IEEE NSSMIC 2006 Conference Record, M08-1

M. W. Lenox, B. E. Atkins, D. F. Newport, A. R. McFarland, D. R. Pressley, S. B. Siegel, "Digital Time Alignment of High Resolution PET Inveon Block Detectors," IEEE NSSMIC 2006 Conference Record, M11-73