There isn’t a place you can go where there are people, but not a Cypress chip.
You only have to get behind the wheel of a leading brand car or pull a mobile phone from your pocket to experience the work of Cypress Semiconductor.
One of our leading suppliers, Cypress is a huge global business which designs and manufactures world-class microcontroller and wireless technologies, with headquarters in California and offices based all over the world.
For a business to be at the forefront of technology, there needs to be passion, dedication and hard work bringing it to life.
It’s time to meet one of the leaders behind the brand.
“Hi, I’m Alan Hawse...”
Kentucky born and bred, Alan Hawse is the Senior Vice President of Software and Solutions at Cypress. A self-confessed Cypress evangelist, he’s worked at the company for the past 26 years.
His unparalleled engineering prowess and product knowledge led to a varied career at Cypress – having worked his way up through every engineering job title at the company!
With a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kentucky and a master’s degree from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Alan’s always been motivated to learn as much as he can about everything. As a kid he even aspired to read every book ever written.
But as well as his voracious appetite to learn, Alan’s ambition is to teach and influence the next generation of engineers.
The Cypress evangelist
Cypress work touches many people’s lives. The business has shipped more than 1 billion PSoC devices and more USB controllers than any other company, plus each quarter it distributes hundreds of millions of chips.
But Alan’s influential PSoC MCU training videos help set Cypress apart from its competitors, teaching people across the globe how to use the products. His passion to engineer and educate has been viewed by more than 1.5 million people worldwide.
Alan’s training videos have been viewed by more than 1.5 million people worldwide.
But he’s not just influencing from behind a camera. Alan flies around the world teaching people how to use Cypress chips, boards and software, and has written multiple textbooks to assist the learning process.
He explains: “For me, nothing else matters other than education. Money isn’t what gets engineers motivated – it’s the utter joy of unwinding puzzles and figuring out how things could and should be.” His passion for teaching and inspiring people started in his teenage years, when he taught classes at the University of Kentucky – where he would later study himself.
“Being an engineer is deep down in my DNA” he explains. “There hasn’t been a day in my life where I haven’t been studying something."
Working with RS
Cypress has been one of our prominent suppliers for years. And as an advocate for inspiring more young people to learn about engineering, we’ve made it our job to help Alan’s training material, and the Cypress range, reach an even wider audience.
“RS is doing stuff for the right reasons and the company wants to try new things,” says Alan. “I think that’s very much reflected in their presence online, certainly their presence at exhibitions, and that makes it fun.
“I want to teach people how to use our PSoC products and RS is extremely committed to having stuff in the right places, so I can get to those people to teach them.
“My personality is synergistic with RS – that’s why I like working with them. The projects we’ve done together have brought out the best in me.”
Being an engineer is deep down in my DNA.
His career at Cypress
After joining the company in 1992 and relocating from his hometown to work in Silicon Valley, Alan and his wife later decided to move back to Kentucky; where they could be close to their families.
Showing Cypress dedication to being embedded in the engineers of tomorrow, the CEO decided to extend the business by creating a development centre in Lexington – not wanting to lose Alan’s talent for engineering and problem-solving from the business.
Alan is among the small group of employees at Cypress who changed the course of its PSoC products – with the energy and dedication behind his PSoC MCU training videos helping to establish the success of the PSoC 4.
Alan says: “We now have around 50 employees in Lexington and we regularly hire the top people from the University of Kentucky.
“While I do have a knack for solving problems with computers, the thing that differentiates Cypress – and the thing I’ve put tonnes of energy into – is making the experience of our customers great. This world is full of a lot of smart people and a bunch of them work at Cypress.”
After reading about Alan’s life and journey with Cypress, find out more about the PSoC 6 product. Plus discover some of the other remarkable achievements we’re sharing and supporting with ‘for the inspired’.
