Kudos for Silicon Valley elite

Congratulations to this year’s inductees into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council’s Hall of Fame, recognized for their outstanding achievements in engineering and technology, as well as their contributions to the community. Thomas Kailath pioneered lithography simulation and resolution enhancement technology (RET) techniques, including alternating phase shifting for subwavelength lithography. He is a founder and board member of DFM company Clear Shape Technologies, cofounded Numerical Technologies Inc (later acquired by Synopsys) and Integrated Systems Inc. (merged with WindRiver Systems), and currently serves as Hitachi America prof. of Engineering Emeritus at Stanford U. Also ushered into the SVEC HoF were Novellus president Sass Somekh; UC-Berkeley prof. Lotfi Zadeh, pioneer in “fuzzy logic;” and Jack Baskin, benefactor and namesake of the engineering school at the U. of California-Santa Cruz. Past inductees in the SVEC include both cofounders of Hewlett-Packard, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, Kenneth Levy, Dan Maydan, and T.J. Rodgers.

All I wanted was to Tivo CSI: Bristol

An electronic distress signal from the waters off southern England sent rescue workers hunting for survivors-but it turned out the victim was a landlocked set-top box. Last month a rescue coordination center in Scotland scrambled two lifeboats and a helicopter after picking up what was initially believed to be a distress signal, but later pinpointed to a house in the western town of Plymouth, according to Reuters. Seems retiree Mary Donaldson was the owner of a faulty digital television set-top box that started chirping the wrong tune. “We sent two officers there to investigate and they were still there when the lady came home” from the movies, according to a coastguard spokesperson. While dubbed “extremely rare” by UK communications regulators, it’s the second occurrence this year in which a set-top box in Britain has sent out a false distress signal. Such incidents also happen on this side of the pond, too-back in late 2004, rescue teams descended upon an apartment complex in Corvallis, OR, believing a plane had crashed, but instead found a 20-in. flat-screen Toshiba TV belting out the 121.5MHz frequency international distress signal.

More industry kudos

The National Academy of Engineering has elected 76 new members and nine foreign associates to its ranks, in what is one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. A sampling of this year’s roster notes several contributors from our industry: Ilesanmi Adesida, U. of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign, for contributions to nanometer-scale processing of semiconductor structures; Dimitri Antoniadis, MIT, for field-effect devices and silicon process modeling; Daniel Dobberpuhl, PA Semi, and U. of Washington prof. Susan Eggers, for respective work on microprocessor design and architectures; IBM’s Katharine Frase, for development of electronic packaging materials and processes (particularly lead-free); Purdue U.’s Linda Katehi, for work on 3D ICs and on-wafer packaging; Ching Wan Tang, Eastman Kodak Co., inventor of the organic light-emitting diode; and Markus Pessa, Tampere U. of Technology, for optoelectronic device contributions and leadership in establishing new semiconductor industries in Finland.

Remembering a Semi leader

James Gallagher, former Semi chairman and founder of wafer stepper supplier GCA Corp., passed away Feb. 7 at the age of 85. He was an early pioneer in the semiconductor equipment industry, helping cofound GCA in 1958 (it was sold in 1988 to General Signal), holding a number of executive positions including SVP of its IC systems group. He also served as president and chairman of Semi’s board of directors from 1978-1980, and in 1981 was honored by the Semiconductor Equipment Marketing Council of Japan for contributions toward US-Japan trade relations. “He was truly a great contributor and served our industry association with inspired leadership during its formative years,” stated James Morgan, chairman of Applied Materials and also former Semi chairman. “His contributions as a co-founder of GCA Corp. and as an evangelist of US-Japanese trade relations helped lay the foundation for a truly collaborative and global semiconductor industry.”