At DesignCon 2026, the conference recognized signal integrity expert Bert Simonovich, founder of Lamsim Enterprises, as the event’s Engineer of the Year, honoring his long-standing contributions to high-speed interconnect modeling and signal integrity engineering. He is also a member of the Signal Integrity Journal Editorial Advisory Board.
DesignCon presents the annual award to engineers whose work has significantly advanced the design and performance of high-speed electronic systems. Simonovich was selected for his technical leadership in modeling transmission-line loss and improving the accuracy of channel simulations used in modern high-speed digital systems.
Simonovich is widely known within the signal integrity community for his work on copper roughness modeling and high-speed channel analysis. His “Cannonball” roughness model, used in conjunction with the Huray roughness model, provides improved correlation between simulation and measurement for high-speed PCB interconnects. These techniques have helped engineers more accurately predict conductor loss in multi-gigabit channels, supporting the development of faster serial links used in networking, computing, and communications equipment.
His career spans more than 50 years in the electronics industry. Prior to founding Lamsim Enterprises in 2009, Simonovich spent more than three decades at Bell Northern Research and Nortel, where he worked on high-speed backplane architectures and signal integrity challenges in telecommunications systems.
Simonovich has also been an active contributor to the DesignCon technical community. He has authored or co-authored numerous conference papers—several of which have received Best Paper awards—and has served for many years on the conference’s technical program committee. In addition, he is a senior member of IEEE and frequently shares practical design insights through industry publications and technical presentations.
The Engineer of the Year recognition highlights Simonovich’s lasting impact on the signal integrity field and his role in helping engineers better understand and model the physical mechanisms that limit high-speed interconnect performance.