1997 Mentor Awards Presented
Dr. Martin Giles of Intel Corporation
Dr. Giles has been a mentor to Profs. Robert Dutton and Jim Plummer and their team of graduate students (specifically Dan Yergeau) at Stanford University for the past several years. As a mentor to this program, he has brought a mixture of his experience with software development and the hierarchy of models for diffusion, as well as using both short and long-term industry needs to define development in the ALAMODE (A Layered Model Development Environment) project. As a software developer he has given valuable advice on the representation issues for materials and interfaces and how to map systems of diffusion equations and boundary conditions onto these representations. His understanding of the hierarchy of diffusion models has been a benefit both to help refine the model specification paradigm used in ALAMODE and to help bridge the gap between researchers who concentrate mainly on only one level of the hierarchy. This is best illustrated by his arranging the transfer of ALAMODE to Livermore Labs which enabled researchers to "script" a new model in ALAMODE which allowed for the first demonstration of hierarchical process modeling going from atomic level to the PDE level. All of these achievements have required time, energy, commitment and a deep insight into the technical needs of the industry.
Dr. Ted Kamins of Hewlett-Packard
Dr. Kamins has been mentoring both Prof. Dieter Ast and his students at Cornell University since 1993 and has shown diligence and strategic foresight in providing guidance and resources. In working with a particular student on the study of polycrystalline silicon-germanium films, Dr. Kamins supplied films needed for the experimental work being conducted. In fact, at a time when he knew his equipment would be moved from one building to another at HP he gladly grew additional films before the move to ensure that the students work would continue while the equipment was being relocated. In another instance, Dr. Kamins, was asked a question (via email, mind you) on the ability to use Ge to put down crystalline seeds on glass at any temperature between 400 and 580 C, and instead of merely answering the question, he ran his own experiment on three wafers and federal-expressed the results and wafers to the research team. In addition to providing materials for the research studies at Cornell, Dr. Kamins continues to provide technical advice on the findings of the research. His involvement in the review of the experimental results provided both Prof. Ast and his students the opportunity to share their hypotheses with a peer and gain industry insight for the application of their work.
Dr. Linda Milor of Advanced Micro Devices
Dr. Milor has mentored Profs. Wojchiech Maly and Prof. Andrzej Strojwas' research projects at the Carnegie Mellon University for the past two years. She has held regular meetings with the professors, as well as the students at both the AMD facilities and at CMU. With her active support, Dr. Maly's team's software MAPPED was transferred to AMD and other SRC member companies where it has been used for many projects. She has supported Prof. Maly's students in conducting research work on extraction and is currently helping the students in preparing an internal report on lessons learned. In her work with Prof. Strojwas and his student, Dr. Milor assisted in finding an application for the defect simulation software, METROPOLIS. In addition to arranging several meetings with AMD engineers, she arranged for one of the projects students (Xiaolei Li) to visit AMD for a month to collect in-line defect data and arranged for two other students to make subsequent short trips to AMD to analyze and collect additional data. Working with the professors and students, she made many improvements to METROPOLIS, so that a much larger set of defects could be correctly simulated. She has also assisted the CMU researchers and students in publishing and presenting several papers. In fact, she and one of the supported students got the "Best Poster" award at TECHCON '96 for their joint work.
Dr. John Sauber of Digital Equipment Corporation
Dr. Sauber has been mentoring the work of Profs. Brian Harper and Vernal Kenner at The Ohio State University since its inception. He has contributed in a critical way to two tasks of this research program. In the first task on quantifying fracture resistance of package structural elements, Dr. Sauber has been responsible for supplying the majority of fracture toughness specimens tested during the program. In one instance he lead in collaborating with a fellow mentor (from outside Digital) in procuring and then molding specimens. He spent a significant amount of time and "went to bat" for the program within Digital to bring to fruition a mold for the fabrication of a complicated specimen, and after completing the mold, continued his involvement in refining it during initial trials and overseeing the molding specimens. He has made equally critical contributions to the task on constitutive data acquisition and interfacing. One of the most important of these was his idea to take a look at DMA testing as a means for greatly reducing the time and effort required to perform viscoelastic characterizations of electronic packaging polymers in addition to providing a set of preliminary data which enabled the researchers to quickly evaluate the potential benefits of the approach. He continues to share data with all of the researchers, interact directly with the students and NEVER fails to follow up on any request or query put to him.
Ms. Denise Puisto of IBM Corporation
Ms. Puisto has been a mentor to Prof. Roxann Engelstad at the University of Wisconsin since 1995. Specifically, she has been mentoring the research activity in the area of mask development and design. She had interacted closely with the students and scientists in discussing the results of their models and in providing suggestions for coordinating the mask modeling work at Wisconsin and the experimental efforts at IBM/Lockheed. In fact, the finite element models developed at Wisconsin to simulate in situ stress relief were benchmarked with experimental data provide by Ms. Puisto and the results of the collaboration were jointly published. In a second area of collaboration involving predicting the distortions due to the deposition or removal of multiple stressed layers during the fabrication process, it was again through Ms. Puisto's efforts that researchers were able to experimentally verify their models to simulate the pattern transfer process. Results of this collaboration were published in early 1997. It is indeed rare to find an individual who secures the level of company resources needed to provide such a direct supply of data for a university modeling research project, and the professors and students she mentors are quick to agree with this.
Dr. Bradley Van Eck of SEMATECH
Dr. Van Eck mentored Prof. Stephen Campbell and his team of researchers at the University of Minnesota from 1995 through the conclusion of the project late last year. Dr. Van Eck became involved as a mentor to this work involving the detection of small particles in semiconductor processing equipment during the period when the research was being moved out the university laboratory into the IC community. Dr. Van Eck contacted industry experts in optical detection and identified the market sector for which PBMS (Particle Beam Mass Spectroscopy), the concept developed at Minnesota, would be most appropriate. When overall SRC budget limitations threatened to preclude the construction of a portable demonstration vehicle which would allow PBMS to be taken to member companies, Dr. Van Eck helped to find the funds to build the system. In another case he set up the contacts which have led to an invitation to take the PBMS to a major equipment manufacturer. He has been a constant champion of the work and continually sought additional funds to support the project. It is through his efforts as a mentor that researchers were able to move their results out of the university lab and onto the path of true implementation.
Mr. T. M. Mak of Intel Corporation
Mr. Mak has been mentoring Profs Joel Ferguson and Tracy Larrabee of the University of California/Santa Cruz since 1995. He has played a pivotal role in getting UCSC's inductive fault model and test generation tool suites (Carafe/Nemesis) evaluation started at Intel and had to overcome quite a few internal skeptics and resource/support issues in the process. He started a cross-site Carafe User-forum at Intel to promote the tool and also managed the multiple site evaluation of the tool. He has also done an excellent job in improving the interactions between two faculty members and industry in the area of accessibility to realistic circuits and providing the researchers a better understanding of the industry problems and the relevance of their research to industries needs. Most significantly, Dr. Mak arranged internships at Intel for three students on the project. These internships provided the students with an insight into realistic and relevant industry problems and their complexity. During their internships, Dr. Mak encourage and arranged for the students to present their work to wider audiences. These presentations gave the students opportunities to get more diverse feedback and get a feel of the dynamics of an "industry-style" presentation/interaction that is not common in an academic environment. To facilitate on-going interaction and continuing of some key portions of the internship work started during the summer, Dr. Mak took the initiative to arrange for a part-time co-op position for one of the students when his summer internship ended. In the words of one of these students " TM's enthusiasm about USCS's research and the way it rubs off on his co-workers creates a good working environment between Intel and the students -- it enables the interactions to become more than just a matter of us 'borrowing their data'."
