Joachim Kunkel is the Vice President and General Manager of the Solutions Group of Synopsys and is responsible for the company's IP and ESL products. Before holding that position, he served in a number of roles at Synopsys, including Vice President of Engineering of the Solutions Group, Vice President of Marketing of the IP and Design Services Business Unit, and Vice President and General Manager of the System-Level Design Business Unit. Prior to joining Synopsys 1994, Joachim was a managing director of CADIS GmbH, a company he had co-founded in 1989 in Aachen , Germany and was acquired by Synopsys 1994. From 1984 to 1989 Joachim was a research assistant at the Aachen University of Technology, Aachen , Germany , where he conducted research in the area of system-level simulation techniques for digital signal processing. Joachim Kunkel received a ‘Dipl.-Ing. der Nachrichtentechnik' degree from the Aachen University of Technology in 1984.