LAS VEGAS – A trio of Cisco engineers took home the US Best Paper honor at IPC Apex last week.

“A New Approach for Early Detection of PCB Pad Cratering Failures” was authored by Anurag Bansal, with coauthors Gnyaneshwar Ramakrishna and Kuo-Chuan Liu.

In the International Best Paper category, the winning paper was “Mechanical Shock Test Performance of SAC 105 and Tin-3.5% Silver BGA Components with SAC 305 Solder Paste on Nickel-Gold and OSP Board Surface Finishes,” by Jasbir Bath, Bath Technical Consultancy. His 11 coauthors include Wade Eagar and Chad Bigcraft, Motorola Solutions; Keith Newman and Livia Hu, Oracle America; Gregory Henshall, Ph.D., Hewlett-Packard; Jennifer Nguyen, Flextronics; M.J. Lee, Altera; Ahmer Syed, Amkor Technology; Weidong Xie, Cisco; and Fubin Song and Ricky Lee, Ph.D., Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Nearly 100 papers were submitted for consideration at the annual conference. Papers were evaluated on technical content, originality, test procedures and data used to deduce conclusions, quality of illustrations, and writing clarity.