Analog Devices IC Designer Preethi Ashwath Moves From Bench to CES Stage

Only about 11 percent of analog design engineers are women, according to career platform Zippia. Preethi Ashwath is one of them. The IEEE member designs analog integrated circuits in the consumer electronics division of Analog Devices, based in Wilmington, Mass.

She builds the protection circuitry around chips destined for earbuds, fitness trackers and health monitors. In 2024, the company gave her its Impact Award for what it called her "exceptional work on a critical project with significant cross-functional business impact." Last year she represented the company at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

What does she design?

Ashwath's main focus is electrostatic discharge pad rings. These are the borders of specialized circuits placed around a microchip's outermost edge. They protect the chip from discharge that can damage circuit paths or introduce latent defects that cause failures later in the chip's life cycle.

"On a chip with multiple voltage domains, you have to plan how the protection structures are placed and connected across the whole pad ring—and get it right," Ashwath said. "A mistake there could cause a chip to fail in the field in ways that are very hard to debug afterward."

She designs integrated circuit building blocks, including ESD protection structures and mixed-signal blocks. She verifies them before integration into a chip. Her collaborators include ESD advisors, layout designers and the digital team that designs the chip's logic.

"I work with them to make sure my analog circuits and their digital blocks work together correctly," she said. "No two days look exactly the same."

How did she get there?

Ashwath grew up in Bengaluru, India. A high school physics tutor introduced her to electronics engineering. Her older sister was already pursuing an engineering degree. "Between my interest in electronics and seeing her already on that path, it became clear to me that engineering was the way to go," Ashwath said.

She earned a bachelor's degree in electronics and communications engineering at SJB Institute of Technology in Bengaluru. She then entered a master's program in electrical engineering at the University of California, Irvine.

An internship at Intel in Santa Clara shaped her direction. She learned circuit design, package design, and reliability verification tools such as Ansys Totem. "Seeing every layer of the chip development process gave me a more complete picture of what goes into building a semiconductor product," she said.

After the master's degree, Intel hired her as an analog design engineer. She gained mixed-signal circuit experience there before joining Analog Devices.

What did she show at CES?

At CES, Ashwath demonstrated Analog Devices earbuds that track heart and lung health through minute vibrations in the ear canal. According to the company, the vibrations can detect arrhythmia, a leaky heart valve, or fluid in the lungs.

"Hearables are evolving from playing back audio to becoming health-monitoring platforms," she said. "The hard part is achieving high signal quality. The signals you're trying to detect are very small and buried in the noise from the person's movements and the surrounding environment. That's where analog front-end design becomes critical."

A senior leader encouraged her to seek high-visibility opportunities, she said. Since CES she has presented other technologies. At the National Association of Music Merchants show in Anaheim, Calif., she demonstrated the A2B Automotive Audio Bus. The bus carries multichannel digital audio, control data, synchronized clock signals and power over a low-cost unshielded twisted-pair cable in fewer than 50 microseconds, according to Analog.

At the company's Global Technology Conference in Boston, which draws engineers from more than 50 sites, she led a demonstration of its augmented reality smart glasses solutions.

Why does she volunteer with IEEE?

Ashwath joined IEEE in 2021 for access to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. She now reviews papers for several IEEE conferences, including the International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, the flagship conference of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, and the International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems, the oldest U.S. conference on these technologies.

"Someone has to assess whether submitted work is technically sound and worth presenting," she said. "And that only happens if practicing engineers are willing to put in the time."

She sees the academic connection as valuable in both directions. "Analog design is a field where you're always learning," she said. "Being an active learner isn't optional in this field; it's the requirement."