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Chris Mack Receives Prestigious SEMI Award This past December, Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) honored KLA-Tencor’s very own Chris Mack for his significant contributions to the advancement of semiconductor manufacturing technology at the 24th Annual SEMI Dinner and Award Ceremony, held at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, California. at SEMATECH working in the areas of deep ultraviolet (UV) photoresist characterization and phase-shifting mask optimization. He helped to found FINLE Technologies in 1990, and joined full-time as president and chief technology officer in 1992. Under his stewardship, PROLITH — FINLE’s flagship product — became the de facto industry standard for lithography modeling and data analysis software, The SEMI Award for North and it continues to remain America honors individuals so to this day. When FINLE who have made significant SEMI president and CEO Stanley Meyers presents Chris was acquired by KLA-Tencor technical contributions to Mack with the 2003 SEMI Award for North America. in 2000, Mack stayed with the semiconductor industry. the organization, where Past award recipients include today he heads KLA-Tencor’s advanced lithography Walter Benzing and Mike McNealy for epitaxial silicon process control development efforts as vice president deposition; Dan Maydan, Sass Somekh and David Wang of lithography technology. for plasma etch; and KLA-Tencor’s own Kenneth Levy for automated photomask inspection. In our next issue of Yield Management Solutions, we’ll sit down with Chris Mack for an exclusive interview In addition to his long list of academic credentials, Mack to hear about his early years in the semiconductor has had a noteworthy career in the microelectronics industry; his experiences as president of FINLE; and industry. In 1983, he joined the U.S. Department of how life for him has changed since he transitioned Defense, where he began his work in optical lithography into his current role at KLA-Tencor. research at the DOD’s Microelectronics Research Laboratory. From 1990 to 1991, Mack was on assignment Specifically, Mack was recognized for his development of software programs that have enabled process engineers to increase productivity of the lithography process. His work over the years has driven many changes in the development, production and optimization of photomasks, lithography systems, photoresists and lithography metrology.
Spring 2004
www.kla-tencor.com/magazine
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