Analog Design Skills (ADS) officially came into being during the pandemic in 2020. Hi, my name is Ken Deevy and I am the founder of Analog Design Skills and the lead educationalist and instructor for the analog IC design courses. I hope you find this website useful both professionally and personally.

The ideas behind ADS came about years earlier when I was teaching in higher education. I was constantly devising new and improved ways to teach analog IC design to undergrad and postgrad students. As a result, many of the teaching principles and learning methodologies embodied in the courses provided by ADS have been honed over many years of teaching and educating.

There was another context to my search for improved teaching methods. I had worked as an analog and mixed signal designer for Analog Devices for over 10 years. It occurred to me even then as a young engineer that many of the available courses in analog IC design were pitched at a level more suited to mid-career and more experienced engineers.

To clarify, these were good courses delivered by some of the best teachers in the industry. However, I think it was assumed that entry level engineers not long out of college had already covered most of the fundamentals that they needed to get the most out of the course. In many cases this assumption was optimistic. Many college courses even then had limited analog content pitched at the level needed to prepare you for a career as an analog IC designer. I became convinced there was a better way to educate you in the early part of your career to become skilled in the art and craft of analog IC design.

Another issue when you begin your career in industry is that many young engineers find becoming skilled in the art of analog or mixed signal IC design is a challenge due to a lack of time, suitable courses, or mentoring. As a result, we created a teaching and learning framework, called TACIT_DESIGN^TM, to overcome these challenges. So now, becoming proficient in analog design is entirely within your reach with the right educational, training, and mentoring support. At Analog Design Skills we have spent many years developing and refining our teaching and learning methodology to provide you with a blended approach that will maximise you theoretical, analytical, conceptual, and practical design skills.

We have delivered these courses to participants who work for many of the largest multi-national semiconductor companies. Our average completion rate is over 90%, which is exceptionally high for online courses (the industry average completion rate for online courses is below 20%).

A central principle of the framework is that learning by doing is essential to gain a full intuitive knowhow of analog circuit design, such that theoretical knowledge is transformed into tacit knowledge. Effectively what you will be doing on an ADS course is transforming ‘knowledge’ into ‘knowhow’. There is a world of difference between ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowhow’.