Winter 1997

President and Chief Executive Officer Jerald G. Fishman and Chairman of the Board Ray Stata

"Since 1990," said Chairman of the Board Mr. Ray Stata, "we have completely restructured the company to better serve high-growth opportunities in the communications, computer and automotive markets, while improving our strong market position in standard linear ICs.

"Changes during this period," he continued, "include the development of new core technologies in digital signal processing, radio frequency signal processing and surface micromachining to augment our long-proven technical expertise in precision linear and data conversion technology."

ADI at a Glance

With MEMs (MicroElectro-Mechanical Systems) market projections ranging from $8 -$14 billion by the end of this century, ADI's acquisition of new fabs is an important step in maintaining Analog's number one position in surface micromachining. MEMS accelerometers are currently used by several automotive manufacturers as single-point crash sensors for airbags. This has reduced the cost of traditional driver and passenger airbags and enabled the development of side airbag protection as well.

Seeing that real world signal process technologies will be a major driving force for the next revolution in the electronics industry, Analog Devices is positioned on the leading edge of this technology. Central to Analog's plan to reach $2 billion in annual revenues is the application of these technologies to high-growth opportunities in computers, especially multimedia; wired and wireless communications; automobiles and high-end consumer products as well as continuing to grow their established standard product portfolio.

Analog Devices has wafer fabrication facilities in Wilmington, Massachusetts, Limerick, Ireland, and Santa Clara, California. In expanding its internal wafer fab capacity, the company has recently acquired a wafer fab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dedicated to micromachining accelerometers, as well as a new 6" wafer fab in Sunnyvale CA, and has added a new 6" facility to its Limerick operations.

Signal Processing for Industrial Applications

ADI has a unique combination of technologies, processes, functions and components serving the needs of the industrial marketplace. Analog Devices designs, manufactures, and markets a broad line of high-performance linear, mixed-signal and digital integrated circuits (ICs) that address a wide range of real-world signal processing applications.

Analog Devices' broad portfolio of real-world signal processing products range from analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital-to-analog converters (DACs) to sensors, amplifiers, multiplexers, and digital signal processors (DSPs). The company's principal products include system-level ICs and general purpose, standard product linear ICs, as well as fixed and floating point DSPs, including the company's notable SHARC (Super Harvard Architecture Computer) processors.

Other products include devices manufactured using assembled product technology, such as hybrids, which combine unpackaged IC chips and other chip-level components in a single package, signal processing solutions in the industrial market: measurement and process control (12- and 16-bit), motor control, data acquisition, smart industrial transmitter and weigh scale applications.

On May 1, 1994, the company formed a dedicated Communications Division, and began developing higher speed devices (extending up into the RF realm, operating as high as 2.5 GHz). In addition to its operations in wireless communications, ADI is involved in wired systems, too. It is a member of a consortium with Aware, Westell, and Newbridge Networks to develop ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Loop) systems, allowing up to 7 Mbps to be passed down a conventional phone line.

Peter Henry, Product Line Manager of Analog Devices Thermal Management Products

President and CEO Mr. Fishman commented, "The growth in both revenues and profits that we have achieved over the past five years provides clear evidence that our business strategy of focusing solely on real-world signal processing is working. We believe we have the market opportunities, technology, product base, financial resources and organization in place to continue growing profitably into the 21st century simply by continuing to do even better what we have already shown we can do very well."

Most of the internal research at ADI is focused around product development," according to Peter Henry, Product Line Manager for Thermal Management Products and references at the Santa Clara facility. "We look to our research partnerships with the academic community to help us identify and research the new technologies necessary to fuel continuing growth. CIS offers a broad range of research disciplines and is a wonderful match to the breadth of activities here at Analog."

For more information, see the Analog Devices web site at http://www.analog.com

What is the "it" that all began in CIS Room 106? While the net already existed, virtually no one thought of using it for business. Indeed, using the net for commercial purposes violated the government's acceptable use policy and was therefore illegal. An outgrowth of DARPA-sponsored research begun in the 1960's, the Internet was originally used by colleges, universities and the government for research and development purposes. It has since evolved into THE "network of networks," interconnecting not just government and education, but a huge portion of the commercial business sector as well.

Marty Tenenbaum

"I worked at CIS from January 1989 to February 1991, pursuing a vision that first began to take shape in late 1987. During that year's Thanksgiving break, I was out running in the Arizona desert and literally had an epiphany of sorts. I was struck by the fact that some 10-15 million people - most of them highly skilled knowledge workers - were using the Internet daily to exchange information via email and file transfers. Now 15 million people represent an interesting potential marketplace. So why weren't they buying and selling from each other?

"It was also just about that time, January 1988, when I realized that the Internet, or something like it, had an important role to play in designing and manufacturing products. People involved in bringing new products to market were working in relative isolation. They used lots of computers, but they generally weren't tied to networks. Why not use the Internet to tie everything together: initial conceptualization, detailed design, prototyping, process and assembly planning, manufacturing, testing/inspection, marketing, sales, service and support, etc.

Services on the Internet

"At CIS, we focused on how the Internet might be used to enhance engineering and manufacturing. I envisioned thousands of services accessible through the net - design libraries, engineering and analysis, catalogs, prototyping, testing. A design engineer, for example, might send off a design to an analysis expert, who would run it on a simulation computer and send back the results as an annotated movie. This made lots of sense. The expert had the right software, a fast computer to run it on, and the expertise to interpret the results. The design engineer would no longer need to purchase expensive software expertise that he might use only once or twice a year.

"This network services model can be extended enterprise-wide and beyond. It can integrate all steps of the product realization process, including transactions with suppliers, customers, and development partners. For instance, a completed design can be handed off to a factory (or outsourced to a contractor) that provides the appropriate manufacturing or prototyping services. It even extends down to the factory floor where requested fabrication and assembly services can be supplied by individual machines operating under the supervision of computerized agents.

"I was working on a prototype of such an engineering environment at Fairchild/Schlumberger's Palo Alto Research Laboratory in 1988, when suddenly Schlumberger decided to sell Fairchild to National Semiconductor and move our lab to Texas. As a consulting professor, I was collaborating closely on this project with Stanford faculty and students at both CDR (Center for Design Research) and CIS. What to do? I decided to move the project to CIS under a unique arrangement. Much of the work was being supported by a DARPA contract to Stanford, on which Schlumberger was a subcontractor. Hence, I was able to remain a Schlumberger employee while in residence at CIS. The arrangement worked well for both Stanford and Schlumberger, allowing an unprecedented degree of university/industry cooperation.

How It All Started

"In January 1989, four of us (Jeff Pan, Jay Glickman, Bruce Hitson and myself) moved into CIS Room 106 along with our computers. (We hooked the computers up to the CIS LAN and promptly swamped it with extraneous packets). Being in Silicon Valley, we had a feeling we would probably wind up starting a company. Eighteen months later in the summer of 1990 we formally incorporated Enterprise Integration Technologies (EIT). However, we remained at CIS where we could continue developing our systems and showcasing them to an endless stream of CIS sponsors and visitors. EIT's mission statement was to pioneer Internet-based solutions for concurrent engineering, integrated manufacturing, and electronic commerce. Our first product was slated to be a commercial version of MKS (Manufacturing Knowledge System), the system we were developing with Jim Plummer's Manufacturing Sciences group.

"By mid-1989, MKS was up and running, controlling various processes in the CIS fabrication lab. It was an exciting concept; one could monitor and control the entire fab over the net using virtual control panels, graphically track work pieces flowing through the fab, keep a watch out for unusual conditions using simple agents. It was a very advanced computer-based manufacturing system, with substantial contributions by Jim Plummer, Krishna Saraswat, Paul Losleben and their students (including Byron Davies, Jack Wenstrand, and William Wong). William started working with Jeff Pan on a system to integrate the design of new chip technologies (TCAD) into this manufacturing world, so that technologies could be designed concurrently with the processes for fabricating them. Later, we would add chip (circuit) design to the suite. The goal was simultaneously to design a product and the process for building it.

"This concurrent engineering approach was rapidly gaining advocates in many engineering domains, but nowhere was it more important than in the semiconductor field. That's because manufacturing considerations strongly constrain engineering options. Moreover, when a chip design is handed off to production (and later to test), they must understand the engineering assumptions to ensure high yields and reliable performance.

CIS and EIT

"Although EIT was incorporated while we were still physically at CIS, it wasn't until February 1991 that we succeeded in convincing Schlumberger to let us spin-off. So CIS served as EIT's angel. It provided the proper "incubator" environment, the connections and exposure to potential customers, inexpensive labor (students!), and funding (courtesy of DARPA, of course). One of our absolutely key employees was Jim Plummer's star student William Wong. Although William was trained as a semiconductor engineer, he couldn't resist the challenge we put to him: "Join us crazy guys. We're going to commercialize the Internet."

"One of the great things about CIS as an incubator was the constant stream of corporate visitors coming through. We must have showed off MKS at least twice a week. While these demos got them interested, it was hard for companies to take us seriously as a business while we were still holed up in a university office. The time had come to move on. But first we needed a contract to support ourselves with. (When we incorporated EIT in June of 1990, we each put up $500! I can't believe how much time we spent struggling to equip a reasonable office with our $2,000 of capital.)

EIT and CommerceNet

"Once again, CIS came through. Jim Plummer agreed (with Schlumberger's and DARPA's consent) to reassign the Manufacturing Science's subcontract to EIT. We were also able to get a sizable consulting contract from MCC (Microelectronics Computer Technology) to help them start their Enterprise Integration program. Together those two contracts brought in around $900,000 the first year - enough money to bootstrap a real company. It sounds pretty easy now, but convincing everyone to place a substantial bet on four researchers, none of whom had previously run a business, was not an easy task.

"The first year was exciting, bringing on board key employees such as Allan Schiffman (CTO), Steve Harari (VP and later President), Martha Dehnow (office manager, HR, contracts, accounting, purchasing...), and Jay Weber (researcher and later developer of the award-winning Website server). One piece of excitement we didn't need was the trying financial period at the end of the year, when the initial contracts were up and we were desperately seeking new sources of support. Our big accomplishment in year one was helping MCC launch EINet. EINet linked MCC's 70 members in a secure trading community that was undoubtedly the world's first extranet (five years before the term was coined).

"With the awarding of our first DARPA prime contract in 1992, things really began taking off. We started what we believe to be the first real business on the net - Public Disc. People who wanted to sell or distribute information on the net would deposit it on Public Disc. Customers would use email to request information. After another email confirming their purchase and credit card charge. the information would be delivered as a MIME (multimedia email) attachment. The service was similar to the Infohaus, introduced several years later by a company called First Virtual Holdings.

"By the end of 1993 EIT had developed nearly everything needed to conduct business on the net. We had interactive web-based catalogs, a secure version of the Mosaic browser, basic credit card authorization, even realtime collaboration. We also had recruited Mark Andreesson, the University of Illinois student who popularized the web with his Mosaic browser). One thing we still didn't have was a lot of capital. Jim Clark did, and in a few months succeeded in luring Mark away to start Netscape. (It's possible that Andreesson would never have met Clark without his position at EIT...) The other thing we lacked was a market for all our technology. Unbelievable as it may now seem, virtually no one considered the Internet as a viable venue for commerce. Everyone was fixated on "the information superhighway," interactive TV, proprietary networks such as ATT's Easy Link, and of course the online services such as Compuserve and AOL.

"Fortunately, about that time (mid-1993), President Clinton started the TRP (Technology Reinvestment Program) to jump-start the economy. What we proposed was CommerceNet - a non-profit organization that would jump-start the local economy by integrating Silicon Valley's electronics industry through the Internet. We invested many man-months and worked very hard to win a TRP grant. Thousands of proposals were submitted; less than 200 were funded. We are grateful for the support we received from Silicon Valley business leaders, especially John Young, chairman of Smart Valley, as well as from California's Office of Competitive Technology, directed by Steve Jarvis. Their confidence was justified. CommerceNet is arguably the most successful of all TRP efforts. It helped create a major industry - Internet commerce - spawning thousands of new jobs and hundreds of new companies with a combined market cap of many billions of dollars. (The return on the government's investment exceeded 1000 to 1, which is in line with other big DARPA information technology wins such as the Internet itself, RISC chips, and computer graphics.)

Internet Commerce

"CommerceNet really legitimized Internet commerce. It brought the Internet into the consciousness of many major computer and software companies, Telcos, VANs, banks, and other providers of basic infrastructure services. At the CommerceNet launch event in April 1994. we had running demonstrations of everything needed to conduct business on the net. We began with 16 members, virtually all local. Today we have nearly 300 members around the world, including virtually all the industry leaders.

"EIT truly pioneered Internet commerce. The business models underlying most of today's successful Internet businesses, the look and feel of their websites, their approach to security and payment, all follow from the reference implementations we developed for CommerceNet members. Indeed, much of the web software people are selling today is based on EIT freeware that was developed under government contracts.

"Perhaps all of this was inevitable and would have happened whether or not EIT and CommerceNet ever existed. Personally, I don't believe the Internet's ascension was inevitable. The net was, after all, but one of many infrastructures competing for attention in a complex Commerce ecosystem. It required the right energy injected at just the right time to settle into its current stable state. EIT and CommerceNet provided that energy.

"By mid-1995, it was again time to move on. EIT had established itself as a highly successful R&D and consulting organization. But with the tremendous competition and resources that the Internet business was beginning to attract, further impact required transitioning to a software and services company. After considerable deliberation, it became clear that the best way to accomplish such a transformation would be through acquisition by a firm that could capitalize on EIT's technology and expertise. Through CommerceNet we met a company called Verifone, the market leader in point-of-scale credit card authorization. What they had (product development, expertise in automated payment transactions, a worldwide sales and marketing force), and what EIT had, were completely complementary. So we put it together. EIT is now the Internet Commerce division of Verifone, and its payment solutions are embedded in leading merchant servers from the likes of Netscape, Microsoft and Oracle.

"CommerceNet evolved into the leading industry association for Internet commerce. After the acquisition was completed. CommerceNet spun off on its own, and I stayed on as its Chairman. I want to ensure that my original vision of Internet commerce was fulfilled. Despite all the progress that's been made, we've really only scratched the surface. Internet commerce is far more than merely selling books, software and wine off a website. The future will see a massive economy of online services - virtual businesses, markets and trading communities - utilizing and building on each other's services. These businesses will cut across traditional corporate, industry and national boundaries, creating unprecedented opportunities for those who understand what is happening and unprecedented dangers for those who do not.

"I invite all CIS member companies to join with us in completing the vision of an integrated online marketplace for the electronics industry, that began in CIS 106!"

(Jay M. Tenenbaum, Chair of CommerceNet, can be contacted at jmt@commerce.net; for more information about the organization visit www.commerce.net).

Systems "Drivers" for CIS Research:

Solving internet bottlenecks, growing demands for graphical information as well as nomadic communications are new systems-level research thrusts that are shaping the CIS agenda

Last year ended with the ground-breaking for the new regional teaching facility across from the Gates Computer Science Building. That structure is now well along with the EE Department Building soon to start construction as well. These new facilities will dramatically improve laboratory and lecture hall space for teaching. The emerging character of the "engineering quad" is a most exciting physical change that directly supports our ability to integrate inter-disciplinary research and teaching across the several departments that surround these new buildings.

Regional Teaching Facility under construction in the new Science & Engineering Quad with CIS, the CIS Extension and Gates buildings in the background

In the last newsletter the CIS research agenda related to technology directions, covering the frequency spectrum from photons (Prof. David Miller) to electrostatic MEMS (MicroElectro-Mechanical Structures, Prof. Greg Kovacs), was considered. Of course one of the hottest areas of concern for VLSI is interconnects and their impact on system performance. Here we have technologists (Profs. Saraswat and Wong) working collaboratively with circuit and systems builders (Profs. Horowitz , Olukotun and Lee) in efforts that include wireless (RF) as well as mainstream digital technology.

In the systems area CIS has now launched three new projects. Prof. Nick McKeown (EE/CS) is investigating very high performance IP routing in an effort to overcome severe congestion on internet routing. Leveraged by hardware prototyping (in collaboration with TI), Nick is investigating both the switching and protocol processing issues. Professors Mark Horowitz (EE) and Pat Hanrahan (EE/CS) have joined forces to explore architectural and systems issues of having available large arrays of small cameras. In connection with the Graphics Laboratory (Gates Building) there are very exciting options for new approaches to 3D image rendering and there are a host of other potential applications. The challenge is to explore trade-offs in hardware/software architectures for such graphics-based systems.

Finally, Professors Teresa Meng and Tom Lee are embarking on a project to build a "real radio" system that embraces the most advanced silicon technology options to realize new portable systems. They have recently prototyped a miniature GPS (Global Positioning Systems) implementation and now see opportunities to more broadly leverage such concepts in close collaboration with our CIS partners with expertise is both systems and IC chip building. In a companion project headed by Professors Meng and Kovacs, the integration of MEMS-based sensor technology offers exciting opportunities to gather and integrate distributed data, for example environmental information.

The above projects are a representative sampling of systems oriented projects at CIS. The ongoing efforts in manufacturing systems, as reflected in the exciting project headed by Prof. Bob Helms in environmentally benign manufacturing (see Summer 1996 CIS Newsletter), is another systems project. Finally, the National Nanofabrication Users Network (NNUN) is providing an essential test bed for new systems concepts in the distributed design and prototyping of new IC technologies. Both the benign manufacturing and NNUN projects are supported by the NSF.

It is interesting to look at several global changes in R&D as reflected in Taiwan and Japan. They provide an interesting contrast to NSF Centers (or networks of centers), as well as SRC and other U.S.-based consortia efforts.

In late December I visited Taiwan during their International Electron Devices and Materials Symposium (IEDMS). In addition to seeing several of the dozen or more IC foundries (this must certainly be the highest density of silicon processing per square kilometer on the planet Earth!), I toured the National Nano Device Laboratories, supported by the National Science Council and housed at National Chiao Tung University. The investment of the government in both equipment and development of advanced processing modules for deep submicron technology is impressive.

In late November I was invited to join a meeting in Japan sponsored by the Ministry of Education (Monbusho) to consider educational reforms being proposed. Japan is looking very carefully at a wide range of issues, including the need to foster more entrepreneurial activities that are leveraged by academia. As pointed out in CIS Newsbrief #31, Japan is now changing the way the government funds academic research. For example, last year they made a $234 million investment in venture business laboratories at 21 national universities. Interestingly enough, the government has carefully studied U.S. university-entrepreneurial business partnerships such as California's Silicon Valley and Massachusetts' Route 128 corridor. Further details about this development can be found on the web: http://www.sciencemag.org/science/scripts/display/full/274/5292/1457.html

Hopefully the above discussion of shifting R&D paradigms can help to stimulate a broader discussion of research targets for the 21st century. Putting in place hyperlinked exchange mechanisms to track and benchmark global R&D progress is an important first step that CIS aspires to promote and support.

Three CIS partner companies, IBM, National Semiconductor and Texas Instruments have been scheduled to make presentations in the seminar, as have smaller companies - Lucas NovaSensor, Interstate Electronics, and Virtual Technologies, Inc. In addition to their seminar presentations, many of these companies have also arranged to meet with students after the class in order to discuss career interests and opportunities with the students.

CIS partner company employees are welcome to attend any of the EE201B seminars, held on Mondays from 4:15 to 5:05 pm in the Terman Auditorium of the Terman Engineering Center. In addition, a videotaped copy of any of the presentations is available on request from Lynn Hoschek.

For the complete seminar schedule please see the CIS Web site at http:// www-leland.stanford.edu/class/ee201b/

Finally, if you are interested in giving a presentation at future EE 201A/B seminars please drop me a note at reis@stanford.edu

Yoshio Nishi, Senior Vice President and Director of Semiconductor Research and Development at TI

TI's Seven FMA Teams

1) Dr. Gitty Nasserbakht, an alum and former student of Professor Bruce Wooley now with the TI Integrated Systems Laboratory will mentor Sotirios Limotyrakis, a student of Prof. Wooley in the Integrated Circuits Lab.

2) Khaled El-Awady, Dr. Robert Soper of TI's Lithography Process Control project and Professor Tom Kailath of the Information Systems Lab form the first of the six special FMA teams for TI.

3) Pankaj Gupta, a Computer Science student of Professor Nick McKeown (EE & CS), will be mentored by Dr. Martin Izzard, Manager of Core Network Technology at TI.

4) Ken Honer, a student of Professor Greg Kovacs in the Stanford Transducers Lab, has for his mentor Dr. Phil Congdon, Manager of the Phonotics and MicroMachining division at TI.

5) Dr. Mahzar Islamraja another Stanford alum and former student of Professor Krishna Saraswat, now a member of the technical staff of TI will mentor Pawan Kapur, a student of Prof. Saraswat's SPEEDIE group.

6) Dr. Jose Melendez, a former student of Professor Bob Helms and himself a beneficiary of the FMA program in his student days now plays the role of mentor to Stephen Tang, another Helms student.

7) Finally, plans are complete for Ajith Amerasekera of TI to mentor Per Georg Sverdrup, a student of Professor Ken Goodson of the ME department.

Yoshio Nishi hosting TI fellows at Stanford Faculty Club with (clockwise) Bob Helms, Byron Williams, Martin Izzard, Yoshio Nishi, Stacey Holander, Steve Tang, Pawan Kapur, Rick Reis, Heyward Robinson

The FMA program allows the company to play an active role in the thesis research project of an advanced doctoral student. The fellow works on a project of key interest to one of TI's research groups under the supervision of both his faculty adviser and designated TI technical mentor.

Before Yoshio Nishi came to TI, he assisted in the launching of the CIS FMA program during his tenure at Hewlett-Packard. He played an active role by serving as the first ever FMA mentor and he hopes to mentor TI FMA fellows, perhaps in a more senior capacity than he did at HP.

Six Supplemental FMAs

Remarking that he "would like to see a stable and closely coupled relationship between TI and CIS for the long term," Nishi explained why TI has made this unprecedented investment in six supplemental FMAs. "TI is seeking to significantly strengthen and expand our capabilities in silicon technology and signal processing, and Stanford is a top-ranked university with leading-edge research in both areas. Thus we see a real need to connect research efforts at TI with those at Stanford, and the FMA program is an excellent vehicle for making that happen."

Funding for the initiative is shared by TI's Semiconductor R&D and TI's University Research Department, which will also coordinate the expanded FMA program.

Ed Esposito, Corporate Ph.D. Recruitment Manager and FMA program administrator at TI noted, "The FMA program is an important strategic recruitment tool for TI at Stanford. It allows us to identify outstanding Ph.D. candidates early in the process and play an integral role in directing their thesis work. When they complete their degree, the fellows already have an established relationship with the company and each has evaluated the other pretty thoroughly."

Clearly, TI is optimizing its connectivity to academic research by strategically funding these FMA fellowships across a breadth of research projects that they consider beneficial to their own industrial research goals. Intensified interactions during the year are expected as students, their advisors and mentors exchange visits and discussions in the months to come.

Essentially a process integration position for the Quartermicron (.25) Technology, Bhat will work with Paul Tsui, PPC (Power PC) 4 group manager as a Device Engineer, though the group will soon become the next generation's PPC7 group.

For the past four years, Bhat's research focus has been mainly on gate oxide reliability. His Ph.D. thesis on "Reliability of deposited dielectrics for thin film transistors in flat panel display applications" investigated the results on degradation of LPCVD oxides under bias temperature stress and a comparison of these results with thermally grown dry and wet oxides. Bhat's thesis showed the effect of different anneal conditions and the significance of interface-state generation and bulk trap generation in LPCVD oxides.

Navakanta Bhat, Ph.D. EE 1996

According to Bhat, "My work at Motorola will be more process integration than process development, but I felt that it was time to move on. And while that was my work here at CIS, I have also developed significant expertise in processing in general, which is one of the main reasons why Motorola is willing to offer me a position."

"It wasn't an automatic decision to work for Motorola. I looked for other jobs, saw other places. I considered two other positions, at National Semiconductors (Santa Clara, CA) and Texas Instruments (TI) in Dallas, Texas. The choice was between TI and Motorola. Both jobs were equally good. It was a difficult decision. Finally, I made the decision because I knew the place, had worked with them, and I preferred living in Austin than Dallas. "

SPIE Program alum

Interaction with industry has been crucial to Bhat's career. He first visited Motorola in May 1994 on a SPIE visit hosted by Dr. Joe Mogab, along with Rick Reis, Simon Wong, Carmen Miraflor and six other students. "That was my first SPIE trip and my first visit to Austin, Texas and I liked the place! A small city, not as crowded as the Bay Area, lots of greenery, lower living expenses, a hilly location rather than flat like most of Texas. A nice place."

Bhat also spent the last two summers working for Motorola under Phil Tobin's thin dielectrics group where he was immediately supervised by Bich-Yen Nguyen (now an FMA Mentor) on process induced damage on transistors under Joe Mogab's Advanced Process Development Group (APRDL). "I was basically characterizing process induced damage. She was a very good supervisor, allowing me a lot of flexibility."

When I was called back to Motorola in the summer of 1995, I worked on a totally different project, though again with Bich-Yen. I wanted breadth, a feel for different aspects. I was given a choice of projects, and I worked on the reliability of multilevel interconnects. In fact, one of the motivations was my ability to take on yet another project and work on it."

He believes that his SPIE experiences have been the key to his meeting technical people in CIS partner companies and in facilitating his job search. Bhat's suggestions for students just starting out in CIS? "I went about this the right way. I recommend any student working in CIS take advantage of the SPIE trips. Just visit companies, get in touch with people working in industry. The SPIE program is a very good program. On SPIE trips I got to visit four partner company sites: AMD (Sunnyvale, CA), HP (Palo Alto, CA), IBM (Yorktown Heights, NY) and Motorola (Austin, TX)."

Bhat is deeply appreciative of his SPIE experiences. "In addition to physically seeing the place, it's also meeting people there, getting one-on-one interaction with people in industry. It's not just about giving a presentation. You actually get to talk to them, to exchange ideas. That is very nice."

Thus, Bhat's career has been facilitated in large part by the CIS industrial connections and particularly by the CIS SPIE program. Much as we will miss him, his new position at Motorola is a compelling example of the power of strong interconnections between academia and industry offered by CIS.

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

Updated 3/14/97