Panasonic

Biography:

Darren Hitchcock is a Group Manager with Panasonic Electronic Materials, where he leads a team supporting rigid and flexible circuit materials for data-center, networking, and other high-performance electronics applications. He brings more than 30 years of experience in the PCB industry, spanning circuit-board manufacturing, design-for-manufacturing support, materials engineering, technical applications, and customer engineering.

Darren began his career at Tektronix and later worked at Merix and Multek as a field applications engineer supporting infrastructure, high-end computing, medical, flex-circuit, and military/aerospace customers. He subsequently joined Intel as a materials engineer and manager before moving to Panasonic’s electronic materials business in 2018. Darren is also Chair of the IPC 3-11a Subcommittee responsible for the IPC-4101 laminate and prepreg specification. His work focuses on helping engineers understand how laminate, copper, dielectric, and fabrication-material choices influence manufacturability, reliability, and signal integrity in increasingly demanding PCB designs.