First Simon Karecki Award Presented

Casey Finstad, University of Arizona

The first Simon Karecki Award was presented to Casey Finstad by Dr. Farhang Shadman, director of the SRC/NSF Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing at the University of Arizona. Professor Anthony Muscat (left) is Casey's faculty advisor and nominated him for the award.

The following is the text from presentation made by Dr. Shadman.

Last year the ERC family lost a person who was very precious and dear to all of us. The very untimely loss of Dr. Simon Karecki is not an event that we can forget. Friends and colleagues of Simon came together and established the Simon Karecki Endowment in his memory. This will be a way of remembering an outstanding individual and researcher, and a way to encourage other talented young researchers in the pursuit of environmental research.

The future plan for the Simon Karecki Endowment is to fund at least one fellowship annually and potentially make cash awards for outstanding contributions to environmental research. So far, this endowment has received a generous contribution from Mr. and Mrs. Richard Karecki, Simon's parents, and major donations from AMD and Texas Instruments. Moreover, the fund has also received contributions from Air Products and Chemicals, SEMATECH, SIA, SEZ, PEKAO Trading Company, and a number of individuals. We would like to express our appreciation to those who have contributed to this fund and would like to solicit your help in securing future donations, in particular corporate gifts; however, we certainly value individual contributions which have added substantially to the endowment in its first year.

On behalf of the ERC, SRC, and the Karecki Endowment Governing Board, it is a great pleasure to present the first Simon Karecki Award to Casey Finstad from the University of Arizona. As an SRC Fellow, Casey is pursuing his PhD in Chemical Engineering with research in developing new processes to reduce the impact of wafer cleaning on the environment. The goal of his research is to develop gas phase processes to replace or augment the liquid processes that are currently used to clean wafer surfaces in the manufacture of microelectronic devices. Casey's concern for the environment extends to many activities, including K-12 and freshman outreach. He has designed and set up several pieces of equipment and trained other students to use them. His academic record is outstanding and he has submitted a patent disclosure. Taken all together, these attributes make Casey well qualified to receive the first Simon Karecki Award.

We are very fortunate that we have Mr. and Mrs. Karecki with us today; it is a distinct honor for us to have them here and we would like to ask them to present this award to Casey.

Casey, this award is given in recognition of your past accomplishments, and to encourage you toward even greater accomplishments in the future.