Tanner Team

Dr. John Tanner
President and CEO

Dr. John Tanner founded Tanner Research in 1988 to develop affordable and easy-to-use design tools for integrated circuits. Since it began offering its first EDA programs, the company has grown to serve thousands of companies worldwide including those working in analog, mixed-signal, ASIC and MEMS product design and fabrication. Tanner Research's Tanner EDA business unit continues to develop products and capabilities to improve the return on investment for designers and to shorten time to market for products.

Tanner co-founded Stac Electronics, best known for the Stacker disk-doubler program for the PC. He also has been a visiting professor of computer science at Caltech. He has done significant government-funded research into design tools, sensors, manufacturing, custom integrated circuits, analog and mixed-signal circuitry and neural networks.

Tanner received his bachelor of arts degree from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. He subsequently earned degrees from Caltech, including a masters of science in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in computer science.

Tanner has been awarded three patents for work in gate arrays and optical motion sensors and has authored a number of papers on design tools and related topics. He also has spoken at a number of industry events. He is an active member of Adaptive Business Leaders, a roundtable of technology company CEOs and helped establish the Pasadena, California branch of this organization.

Daniel Hamon
General Manager

Daniel Hamon has been at Tanner EDA since 1994, starting as a software release engineer. Several years later, he was promoted to manager of the development support group, responsible for quality assurance, technical support, documentation and production. Hamon became general manager of Tanner EDA in 1999.

During that time, the company has established a loyal user base of more than 25,000 thousand designers of analog, mixed-signal, RF and MEMS devices used in a variety of computing, industrial and consumer electronics applications. Hamon and his team have expanded Tanner EDA globally, establishing Tanner Research Japan K. K. and Tanner Research Taiwan and achieving significant market share increase in Europe and North America. Under Hamon's direction, the company also has extended distribution to Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Korea.

Hamon earned a bachelors of science degree in computer science from California State University, Fullerton, and received management training at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He is a participant in the TEC Key Executive program, an invitation-only educational and peer-networking organization whose mission consists of improving members' companies performance by increasing the effectiveness of their key executives.

Dr. Massimo Sivilotti
Chief Scientist

Dr. Massimo Sivilotti, Chief Scientist, Tanner Research, is responsible for setting strategic directions for Tanner's EDA tool development, developing specifications for new feature development, and working with customers to support their evolving needs. Sivilotti has been involved in microelectronics design and EDA tool development for more than 20 years.

Sivilotti received his bachelors of science degree in engineering physics from Queen's University, Canada, and his Ph.D. from Caltech, where his advisor was Dr. Carver Mead. His early research involved developing analog integrated circuits that modeled biological vision systems, neural networks, and field-programmable analog circuits.

Sivilotti is the co-holder of 6 patents and the author of numerous scientific publications.

Nicolas Williams
Director of Product Management

Nicolas Williams, Tanner EDA director of product management, joined the company in 1997. Williams is responsible for specifying and leading product direction from concept to release for Tanner's EDA tools, and manages the application engineering and technical support teams. He also assists in development of application-specific EDA solutions for customers and leads design kit development. His field of specialty is analog EDA and analog, mixed-signal, and RF IC design. Williams works closely with customers and development to determine emerging issues that can be addressed by EDA.

Williams received his bachelors of science and masters of science degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Tennessee.

He has authored and edited articles about design issues for ECN and EE Times and is a member of IEEE.