engineering technology
Carmen Vargas
IC Design Verification Leader, Senior Member of Technical Staff
Microcontroller Solutions Group
Freescale Semiconductor
C
armen was born and raised in Brownsville, Texas. Her
parents were both first-generation college graduates.
Therefore, it was made clear to her from a young age
that this was expected of her as well. During high school,
Carmen excelled in math and science. While she was
attending high school she requested to take a calculus class,
this was not offered at the time, so she took a self-paced
(self-taught) class. This turned out to be her biggest legacy
at her high school since calculus became an elective class
after she graduated.
The summer before her senior year in high school, Car-
men had the opportunity to attend several minority introduc-
tion-to-engineering type sessions at the University of Texas
(UT) in Austin, Texas A & M and the University of Houston.
Through these programs, she was enlightened into the world
of engineering. She was also able to make life-long friend-
ships, with other students, some of whom ended up attending
college with her. bugs before they escape out into real Freescale products,
Once in college, she worked very hard to accomplish her where the customer will find the errors. The initial work is
goals. Carmen supported herself through college with work- performed on the RTL design, with work migrating to
study programs and eventually a cooperative-engineering encompass the gate implementation of the design. Carmen
program job, which helped her gain industry experience and performs verification work at the system-on-chip level.
income. Even though it extended her time in college, it Throughout her 18 years at the company, Freescale has pro-
turned out to be the best decision since she was able to meet vided Carmen with a fertile ground in which to grow her
many industry experts and role models to reinforce the path technical competency with challenging and rewarding
she had chosen. assignments.
Upon obtaining her bachelor’s degree in electrical engi- Motivated to make a difference in the life of other aspir-
neering from the UT Austin, Carmen accepted a position with ing engineers, Carmen set up a scholarship at her alma mater
Motorola’s Semiconductor Products (now Freescale Semi- UT-Austin College of Engineering specifically for women,
conductor). Carmen is currently a member of the Senior minorities and/or low-income potential freshman.
Technical Staff and in this capacity she works in the field of While Carmen is proud of her professional accomplish-
functional logic design verification. Her responsibilities ments, being a mother to her two young children has been her
include the use of both internally and externally developed biggest life reward. Both she and her husband try to instill in
tools and methods to ensure design correctness. The func- their children that anything worthwhile takes a lot of
tional verification discipline is targeted to find the design effort–but is worth the chance. HNM
40 Celebrating over 15 Years of Embracing Diversity WWW.HNMAGAZINE.COM
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