Meet Chris Sarli. He is an applications engineer on the Power Design Services team for Texas Instruments and a graduate of the University of Florida.
Chris recently shared his thoughts on TI’s newest training tool for university students and professionals, the TI Power Management Lab Kit series (TI-PMLK). We snagged a couple minutes of his time to ask Chris five things about what it’s like to be a power engineer. He also shared his confessions of why he wished he had the TI-PMLK in college or earlier in his career to jumpstart his system- level thinking.
1. What do you do for TI?
My job is to quickly prototype power supplies using TI’s power integrated circuits. These “reference designs” are used by customers when creating their products.
2. When did you first discover power engineering, and what made you want to become a power engineer?
Power design teaches lots of principles you will see across electrical engineering. My internship with Power Design Services at TI showed me a world of practical engineering fueled by power design that built upon the fundamentals learned in the classroom.
3. Do you think more students should study power? If so, why would you tell them that power is needed as a career?
Power will inherently always exist in electronics, because without correctly channeling electricity into circuits, no digital or analog product would function. So yes, students should definitely study power.
If you are planning on creating your own product and want to launch a company or create products for a company, power is absolutely essential. The coolest part about power is learning to correctly design circuit boards. Power supply teaches you about system and product design. In power design, you will run into most electrical engineering concepts when integrating with other systems.
4. What was your main impression of the TI-PMLK?
The TI-PMLK allows the user to walk through switching power supplies practically while learning the theory in the classroom. Seeing theory come to life in practice was the most useful part of the supply. I encounter the same set of principles explained in the kit every day in my job.
5. What do you see as the main benefits of the TI-PMLK for industry professionals?
As someone who recently began as a power designer, I learned most of these principles scattered along the way. The TI-PMLK offers a structured walkthrough of fundamentals while teaching those new to power design the principles they’ll use in the future. It is also helpful for walking through the more advanced power concepts essential for making meaningful design decisions.
The experiments for efficiency, transients and impact of components on analog systems are components which are absolutely critical in the industry and covered by the TI-PMLK.
I highly recommend the TI-PMLK and confess – it would have been useful to have in college or earlier in my career. These are my confessions.
Read Chris’ full review of the TI-PMLK.
