Speaker: Victor Grimblatt, R&D Group Director and General Manager, Synopsys, Chile
Meeting Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Time: 6:00 AM PST (Zoom, on the Internet)
Cost: none
Reservations: Follow this link

Summary: The world population is growing and according to FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), agriculture production should increase by 70% by 2050. On the other hand, it is also well known that agriculture is dramatically impacting the 9 planetary boundaries defined by Johan Rockström and his group in 2009. So we are facing a big dilemma: how to improve the productivity of the soil without impacting the planet and its limits.
The growth of crops depends on several parameters such as soil moisture, soil temperature, nutrients (fertilizers), soil pH, soil salinity, etc. Without having an online measurement (real-time) of those parameters we will probably be able to get products from the ground; however, we are not taking into account the impact of what we are doing and the way we are practicing agriculture. With the appropriate sensors and IoT, we are able not only to know the level of the parameters already mentioned but also to act based on the results.
Bio: Victor Grimblatt is the R&D Group Director and General Manager of Synopsys, in Chile. He has an engineering diploma in microelectronics from Institut Nationale Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG – France) and an electronic engineering diploma from Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria (Chile). He is doing his PhD on IoT for Smart Agriculture at IMS lab, University of Bordeaux. He is currently R&D Group Director and General Manager of Synopsys Chile, leader in Electronic Design Automation (EDA). He opened the Synopsys Chile R&D Center in 2006. He has expertise and knowledge in business and technology and understands very well the trends of the electronic industry; therefore he is often consulted for new technological business development.
He has published several papers in IoT, EDA and embedded systems development, and since 2007 he has been invited to several Latin American Conferences (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay) to talk about Circuit Design, EDA, IoT, and Embedded Systems. From 2006 to 2008 he was a member of the “Chilean Offshoring Committee” organized by the Minister of Economy of Chile. In 2010 he was awarded as “Innovator of the Year in Services Export”. In 2012 he was nominated to best engineer of Chile. He is also a member of several Technical Program Committees on Circuit Design and Embedded Systems. Since 2012 he is chair of the IEEE Chilean chapter of the CASS. He is also the President of the Chilean Electronic and Electrical Industry Association (AIE). Since 2021 he is a member of the IEEE CASS Board of Governors (CAS BoG).
Victor Grimblatt was professor of Electronics and IC Design in Universidad de Chile and Universidad de los Andes. He is currently lecturing a course IoT for Agriculture at Universidad Santo Tomas, Chile. Victor’s research areas are EDA (Electronic Design Automation), and Smart Agriculture applying Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and IoT.