Spotlight on Christian Witt, Mahboob Khan Outstanding Liaison

Over the next several months, we will share experiences of Liaisons that have greatly enhanced the GRC research experience, The GRC Industry Liaison experience is a unique program that brings everyday on-the-job reality to the academic community and connects the academic community to daily industrial challenges.

Through a group of Spotlight articles, we hope to provide some everyday examples of how Mahboob Khan Outstanding Liaisonsprovide value for both member companies and funded GRC researchers. We expect these examples to provide encouragement for others to become more involved in this unique program, by exercising individual talent to influence the next generation of researchers and rapidly move research results to the industrial community.

Christian A. Witt/GLOBALFOUNDRIES

Dr. Christian Witt received one of the 2009 Mahboob Khan Outstanding Mentor Awards during the recent TECHCON 2009. Dr. Witt was nominated by GLOBALFOUNDRIES Technology Research Manager, John Iacoponi, for his tireless work with the CAIST research at the University at Albany. Christian enhances the research of GRC funded research along with sharing his academic experiences to advance the understanding of CU metalization with his GLOBALFOUNDRIES co-workers.

Dr. Witt participates in the biweekly Copper Journal Club sponsored by University at Albany as part of the CAIST program. This club is a round-robin literature review forum initiated by Dr. Kathleen Dunn for her students. Students read and prepare a critique of current state-of-the-art literature, followed by a discussion of the article. The exercise encourages students to develop critical thinking skills that separates ordinary from extraordinary scientists. Christian actual presence at the meetings brings an intimate knowledge of the subject at hand as well as humor and grace to the inherently inefficient process of educating new students.

According to Post-Doc, Hendrix Demers, Dr. Witt is available by email and for private conversation to discuss experiments and results, he is available to communicate how things are done in the real world and how it relates to what is happening in the academic lab. Without a link to the outside world, academics can become an end in themselves. One of the signficant contributions Dr. Witt has made to the research team has been providing samples from his own copper electrodespostion reseach to complement student results, enabling a validation of student results with state-of-the-art industrial comparisons.