Affiliations

Although I am currently employed full-time as a Systems Engineer at Onto Innovation^TM, I enjoy collaborating with creative individuals within the academic and recreational domain. Below is a description of relevant groups/organizations that have been instrumental to my development as a scientist and engineer.

Currently my primary commitment is research and development at Onto Innovation^TM. The mission of Onto^TM is to develop advanced process control technology for the semiconductor industry. The giants of semiconductor design and fabrication — companies like Intel and Samsung — are diligently striving to improve the performance of their semiconductor devices. Microprocessors, Logic, Memory and Power semiconductor devices are therefore in a state of constant development, with transistor scaling and miniaturization being the main force driving the exponential growth of the technology since the 1960s. Naturally, as devices become smaller and more complex, a myriad of difficulties arise, spanning heating-related failure of critical device elements to inevitable quantum effects like the tunneling of electrons between transistors. So it's becoming increasingly important for semiconductor device manufacturers to understand the structure and function of the chips they produce. At Onto^TM, I am part of an R&D team that develops state-of-the-art metrology sysems to help our customers (the semiconductor industry) validate the structure and function of their technology, enabling the rapid pace of improvement of semiconductor devices, which in turn bolsters the entire electronics value chain.

My Ph.D research was performed at Dr. Bonggu Shim's Femtosecond Laser Spectroscopy Lab at Binghamton University. Dr. Shim's group focuses on experimental and theoretical studies of high-intensity laser matter interactions, including laser filamentation and harmonic generation (see my primer on Nonlinear Optics for a more detailed overview). In addition to fundamental physics, Dr. Shim's group performs research on applied laser physics, including waveguide fabrication for flexible photonics applications, material characterization, microfabrication of energy storage devices, and advancement of state-of-the-art spatial-temporal-spectral visualization technology. For the ambitious up-and-coming graduate student interested in fundamental and applied physics, Dr. Shim's lab might be a good fit for you.