Six panelists representing graduates from the span of MTL's lifetime reflect on the past and comment on the future. Moderated by Prof. Joel Voldman.
Emily Cooper completed her PhD in EECS in 2003. Working with Scott Manalis, her research focused on biosensor development, with occasional serendipitous forays into ultra-high density data storage and accelerometry. After graduation, she joined TIAX , where she developed sensors, materials, and testing methods, and performed intellectual property assessments for internal and external technologies. In 2007, she and her husband started a small technical consultancy. In between making robotic marimba players and reverse-engineering x-ray detectors, she assists CIMIT, the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, with technology implementation and transfer issues
Shujaat Nadeem is the Group Treasurer of Samba Financial Group, formerly the Saudi American Bank under the umbrella of Citigroup. He joined Samba at its transitional stage in October 2003 as part of the management committee and GM of Group Treasury where he is responsible for managing Samba’s total balance sheet of $50 billion; $20 billion is the investment portfolio for which he also has direct investment responsibility. Dr. Nadeem started his banking career with Citigroup New York in 1993 where he structured and traded foreign exchange and interest rate derivatives. He moved to London in 1996 and was appointed head of interest rate options and exotics trading in 1997. He was promoted to Managing Director in 1999 as part of London derivatives business. In 2000 he was made Managing Director of Citigroup’s Middle East sales and trading business covering 10 countries. In this role, Dr. Nadeem built a close working relationship with various central banks on issues ranging from the development of capital markets to exchange reforms, and continues to do so in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Hasan Nayfeh has worked on technology development at IBM for 5+ years. He is responsible for delivering semiconductor technology nodes starting from inception at the deep research phase, evaluating a variety of viable technology options, to advanced development, and finally towards manufacturing and ubiquitous chip products based on IBM PowerPC microprocessor technology (www.ibm.com/technology). He received his B.S. degree (Bronze Table Highest University Honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Ph.D. (2003) degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all in Electrical Engineering. For his Ph.D. work, Nayfeh performed research on the electron transport properties and electrostatic behavior of strained-Si MOSFET devices. He was recently elected into Marquis Who’s Who in America, and has given invited talks on transistor scaling and strain for future technology nodes.
Kenneth O received his Ph.D degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sci¬ence from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989. His Ph.D. thesis was entitled, “BiCMOS Technologies for Analog/Digital Applications Utilizing Selective Silicon Epitaxial Growth,” and was supervised by Professors R. Reif and H.-S. Lee. From 1989 to 1994, Ken worked at Analog Devices Inc. developing sub-micron CMOS processes for mixed signal applications and high speed bipolar and BiCMOS processes for RF and mixed signal applications. In 1994, he moved to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville as an assistant professor. He is currently a professor at the university. His research group (Silicon Microwave Integrated Circuits and Systems Research Group) is developing circuits and components required to implement analog and digital systems operating between 1 GHz and 1 THz using silicon IC technologies.
Lalitha Parameswaran received her S.M. and Ph.D degrees from MIT in 1993 and 1997 respectively, as part of Professor Martin Schmidt’s group in the MTL. Her graduate work focused on the development of fabrication techniques for monolithically integrated microelectromechanical sensors. She joined MIT Lincoln Laboratory as a staff member in 1997, and is currently in the Biosensor and Molecular Technologies group, where she has worked on a variety of programs, including the development of microfabricated field emitter array cold cathodes, micromachined devices for artificial biological membranes and small-particle manipulation, hardware and algorithm development for cell-based biosensors including the CANARY biosensor, various chem/biodefense-related studies, and novel sample-preparation devices and protocols for the rapid extraction and purification of nucleic acids. Her efforts in the latter have produced a number of portable sample-preparation devices being evaluated by both government and private institutions, and have resulted in one granted and several pending patents.
Alan Warren is Director of Engineering in Google's NYC office, and leads efforts in desktop and mobile search, ads, developer tools, and web applications (like Google Spreadsheets). Before joining Google he co-founded and headed up the technology and engineering side of Juice Software, an enterprise software startup also in New York City. Prior to Juice, Alan spent 3 years as Chief Architect of Hyperion Solutions, two years in IBM's Software Solutions Division, and ten years in T.J. Watson Research. His early research spanned materials and device physics, circuit design, and computational physics and modeling. Since shifting to software and computer science 15 years ago Alan has focused on graphics and visualization, component-based architectures and systems design, and most recently consumer-facing applications within Google such as Google Finance and Google's Blog Search.