Summer 1997

	from Bob Dutton: Global Technology and CIS
	FMA 10-year Anniversary
	Reis: My CIS Experience
	Motorola SPIE Trip

VLSI Technology, Inc., powering the information age with highly complex custom-tailored silicon solutions, global design resources and state-of-the-art manufacturing has joined CIS as its newest partner company. Dr. Rajeeva Lahri, Vice President of Corporate Research and Development, serves on the CIS Advisory Committee.

Dr. Rajeeva Lahri

VLSI's state-of-the-art stepper donation valued at over one million dollars was coordinated through the efforts of Stanford MBA Som Das working with Dr. Lahri and Stanford Professor of Electrical Engineering Krishna Saraswat. This equipment, filling a crucial need of CIS, will enable Stanford to define feature size down to 0.25mm using optical lithography.

Rajeeva comments, "We are looking forward to working closely with Stanford's Center for Integrated Systems as a full member. Through the research and development efforts of CIS, VLSI will benefit by having an important resource to harness invaluable information in order for us to continue advanced process technology developments.

"Much of the internal research done at VLSI centers around new product development. Our membership with CIS gives us a research partnership with the academic community which will help us identify and research the new technologies necessary to continue to fuel growth. In addition, CIS will offer us a broad range of research disciplines and is a wonderful match to the breadth of activities here at VLSI."

Founded in 1979, VLSI Technology designs, manufactures and markets custom and semi-custom integrated circuits for three primary markets: communications, consumer digital entertainment and computing. Based in San Jose, California, the company offers its customers advanced system-level integration capabilities. 1996 revenues were $717 million. VLSI has approximately 3,000 employees worldwide.

Communications: Innovating silicon solutions to power next-generation communications products, VLSI has silicon solutions in four out of every ten GSM digital cellular telephones sold. For example, VLSI's chips contributed to Ericsson's ultra-light ultra-small cellular and PCN/PCS (personal communication networks/personal communication services) handsets.

Consumer Digital Entertainment: Taking a commanding lead in key sections of the market for satellite digital video technology, VLSI offers the set-top box silicon, computing, communication graphics and security blocks their customers need to deliver broadcast content to market faster than ever.

Computing: Even though the company completed a major transition from X86 core logic solutions for personal computers in 1996, VLSI is capitalizing on the system's expertise and technical capability to provide solutions for computing, workstations, servers, information appliances, video games and peripherals markets.

The ability to bring large, complex integrated circuits to market at an accelerated pace and on-time is critical to VLSI's success. To accomplish this goal, and to differentiate itself from the competition, VLSI is (1) continuing to expand its libraries of proprietary functional system blocks (FSBs), (2) utilizing state-of-the-art 0.35-micron, 0.25-micron and 0.18-micron process design rules and (3) using the best automated development tools.

As an indication of VLSI's commitment to developing new approaches and solutions to customer and market challenges, VLSI was awarded 101 patents in 1996.

CIS Senior Research Scientist Mike Deal and EE Ph.D. student Nabeel Ibrahim are already working with VLSI Director of Process Technology Dr. Dipankar Pramanik on interconnect technology. Pramanik is presently advising Ibrahim's summer internship at VLSI, and Deal, who has been doing consulting and collaborative work with VLSI's Technology Development group for the past three years, comments that Pramanik and his group "have always been very dedicated to applying basic scientific principles to their development work and indicated the strong desire to establish better ties with Stanford. They have already assisted us greatly in our research work here at Stanford. I believe both Stanford and VLSI will greatly benefit from this formal alliance between VLSI and CIS."

(FSB, functional system blocks and System-Level Silicon are trademarks of VLSI Technology, Inc.)

For more information, visit VLSI's homepage at http://www.vlsi.com

Twice this year I have had the opportunity to visit world-class, international research organizations as part of their external Advisory Boards Hitachi's Advanced Research Lab (HARL) in Japan and the Inter-university Micro Electronics Centre (IMEC) in Belgium. In addition to stimulating interactions with exceptional staff and technical "banquets" of memorable scale, these visits helped to clarify in my own mind the importance of international collaborations in research as well as complementary aspects of the industrial and academic approaches. I would like to briefly share with you impressions from my HARL/IMEC visits and a perspective on how CIS draws (and adds) synergistic benefits to partnerships involving these groups.

Hitachi's ARL (http://www.hitachi.com/) is a basic research facility of exquisite proportions and technical depth. Of special interest to the CIS partner companies would be advanced metrology capabilities as well as atomic scale experimentation, including surface chemistry that will undoubtedly impact atomic scale as well as interconnect physics (and scaling) for advanced materials and processing. In addition to their strong management style and encouragement of international collaborations, their research projects in software to support internet-based information access (and search) are helping to strengthen broader connections of HARL to the research community. Because their very basic work and metrology pushes the limits of both science and technology, such researchers clearly need a broad network to find "kindred spirits." Their interest in connecting with leading universities world-wide is understandable. Moreover, the passion and style with which they pursue their work will encourage the best practices (and collaborative spirit) that nurture such efforts.

IMEC (http://www.imec.be/) is unique among European research institutes in its broad research agenda and connections to virtually all segments of the IC industry, with strong links in the US and Asia in addition to core membership among the European community. In addition to the national objectives in support of semiconductor research, the various projects in core technology as well as device, circuit and higher-level systems design each support ongoing industrial needs for know-how as well as intellectual property (IP). In looking at the overlap in common membership between IMEC and CIS, as well as their strengths and approaches, several important points of comparison are visible. While IMEC represents an industrial strength R&D facility from the perspective of lab capabilities and approach to technology development, the CIS facility has unique features that support broad national nanofabrication needs (NNUN at http://www.nnun.org/) as well as unique projects across a spectrum of advanced technology, atomic-scale electronics and heterogeneous technologies (i.e. optoelectronics, RF and MEMS). The close links with our industrial partners, including joint projects leveraged by productive exchanges such as the FMA (Fellow/Mentor/Advisor) Program, as well as the extensive infrastructure of Silicon Valley, continue to make CIS a vibrant research environment.

All research labs face two challenges: how to sustain leading-edge capabilities (in both technology and human resources) and how to translate innovations into transferable technology. As an example, consider atomic scale technology for IC scaling beyond the end of the SIA roadmap. In terms of basic surface chemistry, material science and even solid state physics, the challenges are beyond the capabilities of any single organization and probably even national projects. This is a world-scale research challenge. Moreover, the equipment requirements to meet both the atomic-scale dimensions and the throughput requirements for giga-scale chips pose equally challenging innovations in manufacturing. In many cases, both the basic sciences and attempts to master the controlled fabrication (let alone "manufacturing") on these atomic scales is creating serendipitous benefit to IC evolution that is thriving at the 250 nm scale. Using atomic scale technology as an example may help to put in perspective the kinds of science and technology that can be leveraged across the research boundaries of CIS, its sister institutions and in collaboration with the electronics industry that continues to motivate our quest and drive our economic growth.

The FMA program began in 1987 with a pilot team consisting of an electrical engineering student, Tim Schreyer, his advisor Professor Krishna Saraswat, and Dr. Yoshio Nishi of Texas Instruments, Inc. and formerly of Hewlett-Packard Company and Toshiba, in Japan. CIS began monitoring their interaction, aware that something potentially valuable was afoot, and the FMA program was born.

As former CIS Director John Linvill put it, "The FMA program provides an opportunity for pioneering groups of colleagues to come together in a significant way, through informational meetings, technical exchanges, site visits, and small conferences." These meetings are a forum for important interactions, fertile ground for new ideas, and a source of feedback about the FMA program, in which an industrial sponsor assigns a mentor to a specifically selected graduate student, then to be identified as a CIS Fellow.

As of 1997, there are 85 FMA past and present fellows, of whom 20 are still Stanford students, 14 hold academic (faculty) positions, 19 are employed by CIS partner companies and 31 work for other (mostly start-up, some their own) companies.

How did their experience as a CIS FMA fellow impact their careers? The following are some of the more interesting answers.

Pushkar Apte:

"My experience as a member of the FMA program with TI and as an intern at TI helped me to bridge the gap between academic theory and industrial practice, and thus, to develop a balanced perspective in my work. The interaction also helped me to learn more about TI and to establish strong professional ties while I was still a student, thus facilitating a good match of mutual professional interests for my career. I am currently working in the Research & Development division of Texas Instruments Inc., in Dallas, TX."

Heinz Blennemann:

"How did my FMA experience help? I think industry contact in graduate school is invaluable for many reasons. First, it puts the research into context - how does it apply to a real-life problem? Secondly, it helps in finding a job afterwards. Thirdly, from a technical perspective, I learned more about packaging, which is still a part of what I do."

Peter Capofreddi:

"As far as how my FMA experience has impacted my career, I would have to say that it was extremely valuable. In fact, my entire research project at Stanford arose out of work I was doing at National Semiconductor during the summers. I collaborated with one of the engineers there (Michael Mayes) to apply new digital correction methods to a circuit that was designed at National, and used National's lab facilities to get all of my experimental data. Lee Stoian, my mentor, was very helpful in setting up this arrangement."

Mahendra Gupta:

"My CIS fellowship was instrumental in getting data for my thesis and in saving me (and my family) from virtual starvation as a Ph.D. student. More importantly, working with the sponsor gave me a very rich perspective and appreciation for cost management issues on shop floor that I continue to use in my research."

Rajesh Gupta:

"The CIS FMA support was valuable for two reasons: financially it was a big help through graduation but much more importantly my interactions with my mentor, Martin Freeman, were critical to the definition and later completion of my thesis project."

Richard Ho:

"The CIS FMA experience was useful for me on a couple of levels. The most obvious advantage was the exposure to some of the problems facing companies in the field. In my particular interest area, there have been many solutions proposed by university researchers, many of which could not be readily adopted by industry. The interaction with the CIS company allowed me to gain the perspective of potential users of the techniques I was developing for my research. This facilitated the transfer of technology. On a more subtle level, the program allowed me to meet people in the field whom I may not have met had I stayed in primarily academic circles. A lot of very good work goes on in technical teams by very good researchers that never end up being published. These are the same people who end up at the forefront of new technologies when they start new companies and its always useful to know these people!"

Robert Huang:

"A snippet on how being a CIS fellow impacted my career: Being an HP fellow encouraged me to continue my career in the semiconductor industry by exposing me to the types of work and challenges that lie ahead in this field. The exposure to the many aspects of process development has served as a very good background to my current role in the development of an advanced 0.25mm CMOS technology at Lucent."

Tsu-Jae King:

"My mentor, Dr. James R. Pfiester (formerly of Motorola) was a great inspiration in many ways. Firstly, he set a high standard for the quality of research and for the timely publication of interesting new results. Through my interactions with him, I learned how to design experiments effectively, was motivated to work hard to in order to execute the experiments efficiently, received help and encouragement when I encountered problems in device fabrication, and learned how to present my experimental results (in oral and written formats) effectively. Needless to say, the skills which he helped me to sharpen have been invaluable to me in my career as a researcher. Moreover, as a professor, I am also benefiting from his example as a research advisor. Secondly, Dr. Pfiester impressed me with his dedication to his family. It was clear that this well-respected researcher assigned due priority to the more important things in life, and was very happy in doing so. He has been and remains my role-model for achieving true success in life."

Sotirios Limotyrakis:

"I value the experience and support I receive through the FMA program very highly. It is important for me to have such an accessible source of knowledge and support in the industry. I hope that throughout my Ph.D. studies at CIS, I will be able to take advantage of the benefits of this program."

Jose Melendez:

"I now work with my CIS industrial mentor, Dr. Jerry Elkind, on research activities in the sensor technology area. In a unique twist of events, my Stanford Advisor, Dr. C.R. Helms, is now my direct supervisor as he recently accepted the position of Director of the Components & Materials Research Center at Texas Instruments. Clearly, the relationships nurtured by the CIS FMA program were important ones, and continue to be so today."

John L. Mohammed:

"I had worked for both the company (Schlumberger) and the person who mentored me (Dr. J. Martin Tenenbaum) for seven years before the FMA fellowship was bestowed. Thus, the FMA fellowship enabled me to continue a mentoring relationship that had already been in place, despite the fact that I had become a full-time student at Stanford. This helped to ensure that I had some academic freedom in the direction my thesis took, and that I could pursue a multi-disciplinary thesis with a strong component of industrial relevance. My career path has diverged from the semiconductor industry, applying the artificial intelligence component of my thesis work to other industries, including electronic materials processing, and now spacecraft applications. Nonetheless, my FMA fellowship experience is still helping me. My current position involves research and development for commercial, industrial and government clients. The FMA fellowship was an important first step in developing the skills necessary to conduct and sell research with relevance to clients."

Eric ver Ploeg:

"Like all real education (as opposed to training), my CIS FMA fellowship was most valuable in terms of how it shaped my thinking processes. I can*t say that I have much day-to-day use for the facts I learned in the course of my FMA interactions. However, the insight into the motivations of my mentor*s company helped me to better understand how and why businesses pursue certain technology opportunities over others. And I reflect frequently on the basic world view of my advisor (Jim Plummer), whose guidance is almost as invaluable now as it was when I was a Ph.D. student."

Sam Wood:

"I became a National Semiconductor FMA fellow shortly after starting the EE Ph.D. program. My resulting contacts at National (especially John Pierce) allowed me to gather initial information on fab costs and operations -- data not available in an academic setting. Initial results from this data generated interest on the part of other companies (especially TI) that in turn allowed me to extend my data gathering efforts to support my research. My initial contact with National Semiconductor also gave me the chance to learn enough early on about fab operations to then define a Ph.D. topic that spanned both operations management and engineering. As I was completing my Ph.D., this hybrid topic generated interest from business schools. I was hired onto the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business where I continue to study the interface between production technology and operations. The understanding of fab operations that I gained through my FMA thus sparked the beginning of a research program that has lasted through my doctoral program and subsequent career."

Guanghan Xu:

"The FMA fellowship really benefited me greatly since I and my mentor, Dr. Seth Silverstein at GE Corp. R&D became very good friends. I was able to receive about quarter million research funding from GE through my frequent contact with Seth. He also wrote me supporting letters that helped me to get my appointment at U.T. Austin."

Researched and prepared by CIS Information Coordinator Harrianne Mills. And we'd love to hear from more of you CIS FMA alumni! 

Fellows	Year	Company	Mentor	Advisor	Now (9/97)
Adelberg, Brad	94-96	Philips	Martin Freeman	H.Garcia-Molina	Prof., Northwestern
Adkisson, Jim	89-90	Intel	Sandy Lee	Jim Harris	IBM
Agarwal, Shailesh	89-90	Intel	Karl Kempf	Krishna Saraswat	Persistence Software
Amarasinghe, S.	89-96	Intel	Beatrice Fu	Monica Lam	Prof., M.I.T.
Apte, Pushkar	89-91	TI	Mehrdad Moslehi	Krishna Saraswat	TI
Apte, Raj	88-89	Schlumberger	Neil Richardson	David Bloom	Xerox PARC
Bang, David	94-97	AMD	Zoran Krivokapic	Krishna Saraswat	AMD
Beale, John	89-90,91-94	Motorola	Kent Hansen	Fabian Pease	Savi Technology
Beerel, Peter	93-94	Philips	K. Van Berkel	Teresa Meng	Prof., U.S.Cal.
Beerling, Tim	91-93	TI	Man Wong	Bob Helms	HP
Beiley, Mark	89-90, 91-93	Motorola	Joe Mogab/Simon Thomas	Simon Wong	Intel
Benavides, Dario	96-97	HP	Jim Duley	Blake Johnson	Stanford student
Bhansali, Ameet	89-90	Philips	Alan Morgan	Robert Sinclair	Intel
Black, Alistair	88-89	Schlumberger	Neil Richardson	David Bloom	Gadzoox
Blalack, Tallis	91-92	TI	Richard Hester	Bruce Wooley	Stanford student
Blennemann, H.	89-90	GE	Constantine Neugebauer	Fabian Pease	Silicon Graphics
Canupp, Patrick	95-97	Siemens	Ralf Brinkmann	Robert McCormack	Prof., Gardner-Webb Univ.
Capofreddi, Peter	93-96	National	Lee Stoian	Bruce Wooley	Hughes Research Labs
Chang, Kevin	96-97	Philips	Doreen Cheng	H.Garcia-Molina	Stanford student
Chen, Zongjian	93-96	HP	Hans Stork	James Plummer	Transmeta Corp.
Cho, James	89-90	National	Oliver Baltuch	Simon Wong	3COM
Conybeare, Roland	89-90	HP	Zvonko Fazarinc	Daniel Weise	Australia? *
Dhanda, Sumit	93-96	Intel	Kim Gupta	Bob Helms	LSI Logic
El-Awady, Khalid	95-97	TI	Robert Soper	Tom Kailath	Stanford student
Farn, Michael	88-89	TI	Grady Roberts	Joe Goodman	Stanford Law School student
Ghani, Tahir	89-91	Tektronix & GE (89)	Tad Yamaguchi	Jim Gibbons	Intel
Gharachorloo, K.	90-91	TI	Doug DeGroot	J.Hennessy/ A.Gupta	Digital Equipment Corp.
Goldburg, Marc	90-91	GE	Seth Silverstein	Tom Kailath	Array Comm, Inc.
Green, Evan	89-90	IBM	Kumar Wickramasinghe	Gordon Kino	Prof., San Jose State Univ.
Gupta, Mahendra	89-90	DEC	Michael Langone	George Foster	Prof., Washington U.St.Louis
Gupta, Pankaj	96-97	TI	Martin Izzard	Nick McKeown	Stanford student
Gupta, Rajesh	90-91, 92-93	Philips	Martin Freeman	Nanni De Micheli	Prof., UC Irvine
Haller, Matt	91-93	GE	Scott Smith	B.Khuri-Yakub	Acuson
Ho, Minnie	91-93	Apple	Dick Allen	John Cioffi	Radix Technologies
Ho, Richard	95-96	Rockwell	Keith Bindloss	Mark Horowitz	0-In Design Automation
Holander, Stacy	93-95	TI	Jose Melendez	Bob Helms	Stanford student
Honer, Ken	96-97	TI	Phil Congdon	Greg Kovacs	Stanford student
Huang, Robert	89-93	HP	Vered Marash	Bob Dutton	Lucent
Huyser, Karen	90-93	DEC	Reese Abrams	Jim Angell	HP
Igehy, Homan	96-97	Intel	Richard Wirt	Pat Hanrahan	Stanford student
Jang, Jaejune	96-97	Ericsson	Torkel Arnborg	Bob Dutton	Stanford student
Kapur, Pawan	96-97	TI	M. Islamraja	Krishna Saraswat	Stanford student
King, Tsu-Jae	90-91	Motorola	James R. Pfiester	Jim Plummer	Prof., U.Calif. Berkeley
Ku, David	89-90	Philips	Uzi Bar-Gadda	Nanni De Michelli	Escalade Corporation
Kuehne, Steve	92-95	IBM	Sanford Chu	Simon Wong	Lucent
Langford, Susan	94-95	National	Gordon Force	Martin Hellman	Tandem
Langley, Brian	89-90	DEC	Scott Westbrook	Fabian Pease	HP
Laudon, Jim	89-90	IBM	Brian Bakoglu	Anoop Gupta	ZSP Corp.
Leung, Justin	93-96	Motorola	Barbara Vasquez	Simon Wong	Intel
Limotyrakis, S.	96-97	TI	Gitty Nasserbakht	Bruce Wooley	Rambus
Liu, Xinqiao	96-97	Rockwell	Derek Cheung	Abbas El Gamal	Stanford student
Lodenkamper,Robt.	88-89	TI	Robert Bate	Jim Harris	TRW
Ma, Zheng-Xiang	90-91	IBM	Mark Ketchen	Malcolm Beasley	Lucent
Majidi-Ahy, Reza	88-89	Rockwell	Charles Liechti	David Bloom	RadioLAN Inc.
McCarthy, Frank	89-90	GE	Seth Silverstein	Tom Kailath	Argo Systems
McFarland, Grant	94-96	IBM	Roy Flaker	Mike Flynn	Intel
Mekkitikul, Adisak	95-96	TI	Martin Izzard	Nick McKeown	Stanford student
Melendez, Jose	93-95	TI	Jerry Elkind	Bob Helms	TI
Mohammed, John	88-89	Schlumberger	Martin Tenenbaum	Jim Plummer	Stottler Henke Associates
Mohan, Sunderarajan	96-97	IBM	Mehmet Soyuer	Tom Lee	Stanford student
Ong, Adrian	94-97	HP	Bill McFarland	Bruce Wooley	Stanford student
Pan, Doug	89-90	Tektronix	Guy Cherry	Mark Linton	Talkway, Inc.
Park, Heungsoo	91-93	TI	Man Wong	Bob Helms	Samsung, S. Korea
Pein, Howard	89-90	Philips	Satyen Mukherjee	Jim Plummer	Philips North America
Rabii, Shah	93-95	Rockwell	Ed MacRobbie	Bruce Wooley	San Francisco Telecom
Raje, Prasad	88-90	HP	Kit Cham	Krishna Saraswat	HP
Razavi, Behzad	89-90	National	Lee Stoian	Bruce Wooley	Prof., UCLA
Richardson, Steve	88-89	Intel	Daniel Lau	John Hennessy	Sun Microsystems
Rim, Kern	96-97	Motorola	Bich-Yen Nguyen	Jim Gibbons	Stanford student
Schreyer, Tim	87-89	HP	Yoshio Nishi	Krishna Saraswat	Intel
Shen, David	93-96	TI	Gitty Nasserbakht	Bruce Wooley	Enable Semiconductor
Smeys, Peter	93-96	Siemens	Hermann Jacobs	Krishna Saraswat	IBM
Smith, Mike	89-90	DEC	Neil Wilhelm	Mark Horowitz	Prof., Harvard
Snyder, John	92-95	HP	Yoshio Nishi	Bob Helms	National
Su, David	92-94	TI	B. Brandt	Bruce Wooley	HP
Sverdrup, Per	96-97	TI	Ajith Amerasekera	Ken Goodson	Stanford student
Swindelhurst, Lee	89-90	GE	Seth Silverstein	Tom Kailath	Prof., Brigham Young Univ.
Tang, Stephen	96-97	TI	Jose Melendez	Bob Helms	Stanford student
ver Ploeg, Eric	90-91	Motorola	Bertrand Cambou	Jim Plummer	Angara Database Systems
Vinci, Rick	90-95	HP	D. Bartelink	John Bravman	Stanford post-doc
Weybright, Mary	89-90,92-93	IBM	Peter Cottrell	Jim Plummer	IBM
Wilder, Kathryn	95-97	AMD	Bill Arnold	Cal Quate	Stanford student
Wood, Sam	89-90	National	John Pierce	Krishna Saraswat	Prof., Stanford
Xu, Guanghan	89-90	GE	Seth Silverstein	Tom Kailath	Prof., U.T. Austin
Yee, Gaylin	96-97	Analog Devices	Erno Klaassen	Greg Kovacs	Stanford student
Zhou, Xuewen	94-96	HP	Jim Duley	Blake Johnson	Stanford student

* The only FMA fellow whose whereabouts remain unknown is Roland Conybeare, who we think is back in his native land, Australia.

After 15 wonderful years with the Center for Integrated Systems (CIS), I have accepted a new position as Associate Director of Global Learning Partnerships with the newly formed Stanford Learning Laboratory (SLL). My transition from CIS to the SLL will take place over the next few months, after which I will continue to assume my half-time responsibilities as Executive Director of the Stanford Integrated Manufacturing Association (SIMA). I will also continue, at least for 1997-98, to teach my introductory graduate electrical engineering seminars (EE 201A/B).

The Stanford Learning Laboratory was established earlier this year by President Casper and the Commission on Technology in Teaching and Learning as the centerpiece of Stanford's response to the revolutionary changes now facing higher education. Its aim is to achieve a substantial impact on the quality of education at Stanford and elsewhere through the use of innovative technology and pedagogy.

A key element of this effort will be the development of partnerships addressing multi-faceted issues of learning with industry, foundations, and other academic institutions. Stanford recognizes it has much to learn from other institutions with respect to corporate training, home-based learning, and long-distance education processes. In my new position I expect to continue my interactions with colleagues both at CIS and in our partner companies because I strongly believe that these contacts are a rich source of useful insights.

My 15 years at CIS, the longest segment of my professional life, has been truly memorable. My work with outstanding faculty, students and staff has been a unique and very enriching experience. I will always be grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in our partner companies, and to further broaden my knowledge in the workings of the semiconductor, computer, and communications industry. Equally gratifying was the opportunity to establish so many friendships, and I most certainly intend to carry these treasures into my new position.

I bid CIS goodbye, with a great deal of gratitude for the chance to be a part of it from its infancy and to grow with it as its executive director.

I will be in touch.

CIS SPIE Trip to Motorola in May

CIS SPIE group at Motorola: (Back) J. J. Lee, John Stankus, Cotton Hance, Rick Reis, Bich-Yen Nguyen, (Front) Tien-Chun Yang, Kathryn Wilder, Barbara Paldus, Ze-Kai Hsiau, Alvin Loke, Navakanta Bhat.

This past May, five CIS affiliated Ph.D. students, accompanied by CIS Executive Director Rick Reis, visited

The SPIE team that went to Motorola consisted of Ze-Kai Hsiau (Modeling Etching and Deposition with Robust Boundary Movement), Alvin Loke (Copper Drift in Dieletrics for ULSI Interconnects), Barbara Paldus (Cavity Ring-down Spectroscopy as a Diagnostic for Process Control), Tien-Chun Yang (Effect of Growth Conditions on the Reliability of Ultra-thin MOS Gate Oxides), and Kathryn Wilder (Scanning Probe Lithography for Electron Device Fabrication).

The SPIE team's host, Motorola's University R&D Projects Manager and CIS Advisory Committee representative Cotton Hance, remarked, "It was a pleasure to have the Stanford students and Dr. Rick Reis visit our Ed Bluestein facility here in Austin. I was impressed with the poise and professional maturity of the students as they dealt with having to compress their technical presentations into time slots smaller than their work merited. At times it appears that such cycle time reduction exercises seem to drive many of our activities."

The students were VERY impressed with what they saw, who they met and what they did. They were particularly pleased by the chance to talk individually with their hosts at lunch. The folks at Motorola (Cotton Hance, Chet Freda, Don Coronell, Jeff Wetzel, Karen McBrayer, J.J. Lee, Hsing Tseng) did an excellent job of making the experience very worthwhile.

In their own words:

Ze-Kai Hsiau, EE graduate student of Professor Bob Dutton:

"The visit to Motorola was one of the most positive experiences I have had visiting companies. A few things distinguish this visit: I felt that in talking with four people in the afternoon we were able to exchange a lot of information, and the tour guided by Chet Freda exposed me to packaging and testing facilicities in VLSI fabrication to which we can't have much access at Stanford. The Motorola SPIE trip experience was excellent."

Alvin Loke, EE graduate student of Professor Simon Wong:

"The Motorola visit was a very meaningful experience. I truly enjoyed the technical exchanges with my hosts, Jeff Wetzel and John Stankus, who provided valuable input towards my current work. Feedback from these SPIE trips really helps me steer my research to be more meaningful to industry. It was also great to catch up with Motorola friends, especially Bich-Yen Nguyen, and old CIS friends, namely Navakanta Bhat and John Scott. It's too bad we arrived a few days late to chase the twister, but the Texas BBQ was a good consolation!"

Kathryn Wilder, Applied Physics graduate student of Calvin Quate:

"The Motorola SPIE trip was well organized and very worthwhile. Our presentations were well attended and the talks generated some interesting discussion. We also had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with Motorola engineers, got a tour of the site, and even experienced a bit of Austin (e.g., "chicken fried chicken"). The visit was a very positive experience for all of us."

Tien-Chun Yang, EE graduate student of Professor Krishna Saraswat:

"I was impressed by Motorola's huge building and was surprised to see signs in the building such as "0.4 mile to cafeteria." The production line tour was very good and simply unforgettable. In fact, the whole research environment was vibrant, and we enjoyed an intensely interactive visit, with stimulating discussions focused on a wealth of experimental data thrown to us. They asked us questions tough enough to be used in E.E. quals at Stanford! And we benefited a lot from those questions, so the interaction was good mental exercise for us all. Then, after a day much like a qualifying exam, it was great to have a good Texas BBQ. I will never forget the Texas-sized meal in a BBQ restaurant Alvin picked. He's an expert on good BBQ restaurants in Austin. He ate his way through all the good ones in Austin during his summer job at Motorola, so if you plan to go to Austin, don't forget to consult him first. Motorola seemed like a good place to work, with excellent engineers, friendly people, stimulating atmosphere, and good BBQ restaurants nearby. The trip was a very good one for me. I learned a lot."

"In short," commented Reis "we learned a great deal about Motorola Austin's very impressive operation, the students had an excellent opportunity to present their research to a wide and interested audience, and we got to see some of Austin in the process."

NOTE: SPIE get-togethers are held regularly to improve interaction among SPIE students, get feedback from their visits to partner companies, and prepare for upcoming SPIE trips. SPIE trips to Siemens and Philips are confirmed for September of this year with Profs. Dutton (Siemens) and Tom Lee (Philips) leading the teams. See SPIE luncheon photos in this issue, below and on page 2. To arrange for a SPIE visit, please contact CIS Programs Manager Carmen Miraflor.

Send comments, suggestions to: coordinator@cis.stanford.edu

Updated 12/3/97