Advancing the Future
Electrical and computer engineer Shawn Blanton ’87 gained an enduring bit of wisdom at Calvin from his statics and dynamics professor Ned Nielsen: “‘Learn as much as you can wherever you are.’ I’ve kept that philosophy,” Blanton says.
Blanton is the associate department head for research and the Joseph F. and Nancy Keithley Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). His research focuses on designing, manufacturing, and testing integrated circuits, also known as microchips.
Often called the “building blocks” of technology, chips drive the functionality of today’s electronics. They do everything from telling a car airbag to deploy to keeping the complex networks of servers that power platforms like Google running smoothly.
Blanton, aptly known as the “chip doctor,” says even when things are going well, only about 90 percent of newly manufactured chips correctly function, which means all have to be thoroughly tested.
Testing is not perfect, which means some bad chips will be deployed, but when “you’re dealing with safety-critical applications, such as autonomous-driving vehicles, you want all the chips to work.”
Often, when a bad chip escapes testing, it is discovered when something goes wrong. “And when you want to understand what has gone wrong in a chip that has billions of transistors and connections, it’s hard to find that needle in a haystack,” Blanton says.
There’s a great deal of job security in the work Blanton and his research team conduct. “Changes in technology have revolved around the basic transistor switch getting smaller and smaller. Phones get more powerful, but they don’t get bigger, for example. New technologies do fail, and so we have this work that we can always be doing.”
Blanton is highly regarded, widely published, and well-recognized in his field and has won numerous awards over his decades-long career, most recently the 2022 Golden Torch Award for Lifetime Achievement in Academia from the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). He is the founder of the Advanced Chip Test Laboratory at CMU, and his work has led to more than 200 publications and seven patents.
Blanton credits his parents with first encouraging him to pursue a profession in STEM but acknowledges not every student receives the benefit of that encouragement.
A long-time member of the NSBE, Blanton is especially passionate about increasing diversity in the field of engineering. He received the Emerald Award in 2006 for outstanding leadership in this area.
Blanton explains that students may not realize the opportunities available to them; they may feel a PhD is financially or academically out of reach. “Opening doors means showing students the avenues to advanced degrees. When they find out it’s not a huge leap after their undergrad, they go for it, and they accomplish it,” he says.
Blanton’s recruiting track record at Carnegie Mellon is notable. “We went from having just a handful of students of color in our PhD program to having over 150; that put us in the number one position in the U.S. for diversity, and that’s more than double over large schools like Georgia Tech.”
He has also partnered with Calvin to recruit undergraduate students for summer research opportunities at CMU and, in some cases, for advanced degrees. “I’m not chasing accolades,” he says. “It’s more about the people.”
Being a Christian in academia isn’t always easy, admits Blanton, but it’s given him opportunities to share his faith with those around him, whether that’s sharing God’s word with those he encounters or holding his students to a high standard of integrity in research.
“There’s a thread of ethics and fairness in the work we do all the time. There’s always the possibility to spin what we do, but we’re not going to do that, we’re going to show all sides. And I share that with my students.”
Blanton also emphasizes the inherently ethical nature of a vocation that focuses on designing a better, more sustainable world. “It’s a career aimed exactly at redeeming every square inch of God’s world to make it better for humankind. We’re always in that space, heading towards that goal.”