SWE Distinguished New Engineer

Judy Amanor-Boadu, Ph.D.

Intel Corporation

For technical prowess; for driving competency across teams with transformative methodologies; and for serving as a mentor and role model for communication, collaboration, and team leadership skills.

Judy Amanor-Boadu, Ph.D., is a staff analog engineer for Intel Corporation, focused on power delivery modeling and characterization of Intel Xeon central processing unit (CPU) processors for data center products. She also provides implementation guidelines and performs feasibility studies and design verification of current and future generations of Xeon processors.

While pursuing her Ph.D., Dr. Amanor-Boadu investigated and produced novel ways to reduce battery charge time and efficiency without compromising safety. She researched methodologies outside her area of study to apply statistical experimental design to select optimal pulse charging parameters for charge currents to reduce charge time by 50%. Her work was published in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Industrial Electronics, and four companies have expressed interest in this technology.

Following graduation, Dr. Amanor-Boadu joined Intel as an analog engineer. Her technical competency soon brought her to the high-revenue Xeon server program, where she independently developed and implemented practical solutions to a broad range of complex issues. One example was a critical concern of CPU failure due to unbalanced power delivery. Dr. Amanor-Boadu and her team developed a novel voltage regulator test tool interposer that could support the validation of multiple heterogeneous dies on a single package. This achievement garnered several awards, and the design concept has since proliferated across all current and future Xeon programs.

Dr. Amanor-Boadu then became power delivery lead for the next-generation Xeon CPU, taking ownership of a performance issue that could cause significant performance degradation. She implemented key design changes that improved performance by 20%. She also led a team to establish a solid methodology for vendor voltage regulator (VR) model development and correlation that is now used across all major VR vendors.

During her doctoral studies, Dr. Amanor-Boadu co-founded several student organizations, including the Graduate SWE committee, where she increased student involvement by sixfold. She served as FY16 Society Graduate SWE webinar coordinator and, in 2017, co-organized the first IEEE African workshop on circuits and systems in Ghana. She is the founder of STEM GEMs, an after-school robotics club for low-income elementary and middle school girls in Ghana.

Since 2020, Dr. Amanor-Boadu has published more than 16 technical papers and received a patent for a flexible display panel power topology. She serves as an academic associate for the Engineering Projects in Community Service program at Arizona State University, where she received the Navigator Award for best mentor in 2019. She also received the 2020 IEEE IMS J. Barry Oakes Advancement Award for her technical contributions and mentorship and Texas A&M University’s coveted George W. Kunze Endowed Graduate Student Award.

Dr. Amanor-Boadu holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. She is a member of the SWE Phoenix Section. In her spare time, she likes to hike and participate in outdoor activities.