The award honors the memory of the SPIE senior member and Mentor chief engineer
LIGHT TOUCH: Long, loading a photoresist sample into a vacuum chamber in order to measure it using soft X-ray scattering at the Advanced Light Source.
BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA, and Cardiff, UK — Luke Long has been announced as the 2020 recipient of the $10,000 Nick Cobb Memorial Scholarship by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and Mentor Graphics, a Siemens Business, for his potential contributions to the field related to advanced lithography. Long will receive his award certificate during the Welcome and Plenary Presentations at the SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium on Monday, February 24, in San Jose, California.
The Nick Cobb scholarship recognizes an exemplary graduate student working in the field of lithography for semiconductor manufacturing. The award honors the memory of Nick Cobb, who was an SPIE Senior Member and chief engineer at Mentor. His groundbreaking contributions enabled optical and process proximity correction for IC manufacturing.
Long is pursuing his PhD degree in the physics department of the University of California at Berkeley, working with Professors Andrew Neureuther, Senior Scientist Patrick Naulleau, and Associate Professor of Chemistry and Physics Naomi Ginsberg. His current research interests lie in the fundamental physics of EUV photoresist, specifically in understanding the spatial propagation of chemistry responsible for production of lithographic patterns. He received his Bachelor of Science in Engineering Physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2015.
"As we in the community recognize, photolithography has enabled immense technological innovation, overcoming many scientific and technological barriers along the way," says Long. "Now, as device scale approaches the nanometer regime, the quantized nature of light-matter interaction poses significant new challenges to future device scaling. It is an honor to win the Nick Cobb scholarship in recognition of my work on understanding EUV stochastics and serves as motivation going forward for furthering our understanding of this challenging subject. I am excited to utilize the support to continue my research, and to present my results at SPIE conferences in the coming year."
"We are pleased to again be collaborating with SPIE to award the Second Annual Nick Cobb Memorial Scholarship to Luke Long," said Mentor Vice President of Product Management Steffen Schulze. "The scholarship honors Nick's fundamental work in the field of lithography and his many contributions as the chief architect of Mentor's Calibre OPC solutions. There is a noteworthy tie between Nick and winner Luke Long, in that both received undergraduate education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and both attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. We are proud to continue this legacy of promoting innovation and engineering talent, and Luke's research on nanopatterning materials fundamentals, reaction mechanisms, and nanoscale stochastic behavior is particularly pertinent for our industry's challenges for advanced nodes."
Mentor, a Siemens business, is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products, consulting services, and award-winning support for the world's most successful electronic, semiconductor, and systems companies.
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