SAN JOSE, CA /PRNewswire/ -- SEMI announced the recipients of the 2007 SEMI Award for North America and the association's highest honor for technical innovation—the Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. C. Grant Willson, professor, College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin will be presented with the SEMI Award for 2007, and the SEMI Lifetime Achievement Award will be conferred upon Dr. Bernard S. Meyerson, vice president for Strategic Alliance and chief technologist, IBM Systems and Technology Group. The industry honors will be presented at the SEMI Award Banquet, Wednesday, October 17, 2007, 6:00pm, at the Santa Clara Marriott.
"SEMI and its members commend Dr. Willson and Dr. Meyerson for their significant contributions to the advancement in semiconductor manufacturing," said Stanley T. Myers, president and CEO of SEMI. "We are pleased to recognize Grant Willson for his work on the chemically amplified resist, which spurred greater productivity in lithography, and Bernie Meyerson for numerous contributions to industry advancement and innovation that span his professional career."
2007 SEMI Award for North America
Dr. Willson is the co-inventor of chemically amplified resist, a key invention that has enabled leading edge lithography for the last 25 years. The development work on chemically activated resists originated at the IBM Almaden Research Center in the late 1970's. At the time of this invention, the industry was faced with a critical problem. The only way to increase the performance of semiconductor devices was to continue to make them smaller. This required using patterning tools that used shorter wavelength UV radiation. The available UV sources required inordinately long exposures—30 times longer than acceptable production times.
Dr. Willson was instrumental in developing resists that relied on chemical amplification to increase the sensitivity by a factor of 100 while maintaining the high resolution needed.
In addition to its high sensitivity, Dr. Willson's resist also proved to have very high contrast, which enabled the further extension of lithography to its current limits.
The SEMI Award for North America has been presented annually since 1979 to honor individuals and teams who have made significant technical contributions to the semiconductor industry. Nominations are accepted from individuals of North American-based member companies of SEMI. Past award recipients include Walter Benzing and Mike McNealy, Ken Levy, Jean Hoerni, Dan Maydan, Robert Akins and Igor Khandros, among others.
SEMI Lifetime Achievement Award
Dr. Meyerson joined IBM Research as a staff member in 1980, and led in the development of silicon, germanium and other high performance technologies over a period of ten years. He subsequently led a series of development organizations within IBM focused on communications and semiconductor technology, from which he created numerous major business endeavors encompassing applications ranging from pervasive wireless enablement (802.11x) to high-end data transport.
In 1992, Dr. Meyerson was appointed an IBM Fellow, the company's highest technical honor. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the IEEE.
Dr. Meyerson became chief technologist of IBM's Technology Group in 2001, and in 2003, he assumed operational responsibility for IBM's Semiconductor Technology Research and Development as head of the SRDC (Semiconductor Research and Development Center). In that role he led the world's largest semiconductor development consortium, members of which include Sony, Toshiba, AMD, Samsung, Chartered Semiconductor, and Infineon. In December 2005, he was appointed to the position of vice president of Strategic Alliances and CTO of IBM's System Technology Group.
Throughout the years Dr. Meyerson has received numerous awards for his work including: the Materials Research Society Medal, the Electrochemical Society Electronics Division Award, the IEEE Ernst Weber Award for the body of work culminating in the commercialization of Si-Ge-based communications technology, and the IEEE Electron Devices Society J. J. Ebers Award.
He was cited as "Inventor of the Year" in 1998 by the NY State Legislature, and was recognized in 1999 as "United States Distinguished Inventor of the Year" by the US IP Law Association and the Patent and Trademark office. In 2002, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
Dr. Meyerson and his team have also been the subject of a long-running study on the topic of innovation in large organizations, culminating in the 2001 Harvard Business School Press publication titled "Radical Innovation; How Mature Companies Can Outsmart Upstarts."
The SEMI Lifetime Achievement Award is the highest honor bestowed by SEMI, and was first presented in 1994 to honor individuals who have made numerous contributions to the advancement of the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Past recipients include Jim Koford, Richard Spanier, Brude Deal, Peter Rose, Ken Levy, Dan Maydan, David K. Wang, and Sasson Somekh.
SEMI is a global industry association serving companies that provide equipment, materials and services used to manufacture semiconductors, displays, nano-scaled structures, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and related technologies. SEMI maintains offices in Austin, Beijing, Brussels, Hsinchu, Moscow, San Jose (Calif.), Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo and Washington, D.C. For more information, visit its Web site.