Albert Wallash, Ph.D has worked in magnetic recording since receiving his Ph.D. in solid-state physics from Temple University in 1986. He has worked at IBM on MR head design, modeling and testing, and at Quantum Corporation and Maxtor Corporation on hard disk drive development. His current position is worldwide ESD Engineer/Scientist Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) in  San Jose, California. HGST is a leading supplier of hard disk drives and external storage devices. Ever since he zapped his first MR head by accident in 1988, he has been studying electrostatics and ESD and applying that knowledge to increase yields of magnetic recording components. He initiated and chaired the first magnetic recording session at the EOS/ESD Symposium in 1996 and is past President and Vice-President of the Silicon Valley ESD Society. He has authored over 40 publications and has 31 patents. He developed and taught a seminar on ESD called "Understanding and Preventing ESD in Magnetic Recording". His current research interests are electrical breakdown across sub-micron gaps and ESD control for ultra-ESD sensitive devices without any built-in ESD protection devices. He has coined the expressions "Don't lose your head over ESD!, and "Don't have a breakdown over ESD!"

Wayne Tan MSEE, MSME  - Wayne Tan has been a Senior Principal ESD Engineer and ESD Coordinator for Western Digital Wafer Fab Operation (WFO) in Fremont California since July 2005. WFO manufactures Magneto-Resistive Heads for Western Digital Corporation (WDC).

Wayne was president of Wenvy Technologies, Inc. (WTI), a San Jose based Supplier of Static Control Materials and Solutions, through March 2005.  From March through July 2005, Wayne was with Medtronic Microelectronics, Tempe Arizona. From 1983 to 2003, Wayne was a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in Sunnyvale, CA. He was the ESD Coordinator and Advisor for the Manufacturing Services Division (MSD), which is responsible for all Asia assembly, test, finish and ship operations.

Wayne received bachelor's degrees in ME in 1978 and EE in 1980, from Florida International University in Miami, FL. He also achieved a MS degree in EE and Computer Science from Santa Clara University in 1984. Wayne had six patents while with AMD and two pending at WDC. He has presented and co-authored papers at the EOS/ESD Symposia in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1999 including the Best Presentation Award for his paper in 1995. He also presented papers at Semicon West, Semicon Singapore and Semicon Korea. His articles on ESD control also appear in Solid State Technology (US and China), Circuit Assembly Magazine, Compliance Engineering and PCB, an Italian trade magazine. Wayne was a member of the ESD Association Board of Directors from 1995 to 1999, participated in various Standard Working Groups at the ESD Association. He currently serves as Vice-President of the Silicon Valley EOS/ESD Society.

 

Arnold Steinman MSEE is Chief Technology Officer for Ion Systems Inc., Berkeley, CA., responsible since 1983 for the design concepts of the company's ionization static control products. He holds four patents covering air ionizer technology.  Steinman graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, receiving both BSEE and MSEE degrees.

Steinman is a member of the Board of Directors of the ESD Association and a past chairperson of the Ionization Standards Committee. Steinman is also a senior  member of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST), a contributor to IEST standard RP-CC-022,  "Electrostatic Charge in Cleanrooms and Controlled Environments", and a member of the Electrostatics Society of America. For 8 years he has served as leader of the SEMI ESD Task Force, which has produced  E78-1102 - “Guide to Assess and Control Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) and Electrostatic Attraction (ESA) for Equipment”, E43-0301 – “Guide for Measuring Static Charge on Objects and Surfaces”, and E129-1103 – “Guide to Controlling Electrostatic Charge in a Semiconductor Manufacturing Facility”. He is the SEMI representative on static control to the International Roadmap for Semiconductors.

Mr. Steinman is a regular contributor of technical articles to industry publications such as Micro, Semiconductor International, Data Storage, Evaluation Engineering, Compliance Engineering and Cleanrooms magazines. He serves on the editorial board of Micro and Compliance Engineering magazines. He has made technical presentations at the ESD Association Symposium, the IEST annual technical meeting, the International Committee of Contamination Control Sciences (ICCCS) meetings, SEMI technology forums, and for many other national and international industry groups.   

Leo G. Henry, Ph.D is an ESD consulting engineer.  He has worked in the electronics industry for over 23 years and in the field of ESD for over 16 years He was a Sr.Scientist/Sr.Consulting Engineer for ION Systems in Berkeley. Previously, he was an ESD/TLP consulting engineer to BEI, Inc. in Nevada, served as a product manager for ESD products at ORYX Corporation in Fremont,CA, and an ESD Consulting engineer for GTLeader in Sunnyvale, CA.  He also spent 14 years at Advanced Micro Devices as a Member of the Technical Staff.

Leo G. received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Physics from the University of the West Indies.  He received his MS and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science at the University of California at Berkeley.

Dr. Henry has taught Physics at the University of West Indies, Materials Science and Failure Analysis Principles at San Jose State University and ESD at various Symposia,. He has tutored ESD at the last 10 ESDiscovery seminars, taught EOS/ESD Failure Analysis and IC ESD Testing at the EOS/ESD Symposium (1997-2005) and also at ASM's ISTFA (1997-2005).

Dr. Henry has published many papers on Electrostatic Discharge (ESD),  Electrical Overstress (EOS),  Transmission Line Pulsing (TLP) and Materials Science.  He has also presented many conference papers on these topics including Failure Signature Analysis and E-BEAM Analysis. His technical expertise also includes latchup testing and system level testing using the IEC ESD standard.  

Dr. Henry, who is a senior member of the IEEE is also a member of ASM/EDFAS, a world wide Failure Analysis group.  He has served in several capacities including President and newsletter editor of the Silicon Valley (SiVa) EOS/ESD Society in California. For the last 11 years, he has been a member of the SiVa Society Technical Committee for Education.

Leo G. was a participating member of the IDEMA ESD standards WG and is presently chair of  the ESD Association's ESD Standards WG-5.0 for  ICs/ Device Testing. He has served on the ESD Association's ESD Symposium Technical Program Committee (1996-2005), and is a member of the Association's Technical Advisory and Support (TAS) committee for Standards. As an elected member (1995-2000 & 2002-2007) of the Board of Directors of the ESD Association,  he is part of the industry liaison team , and is chair of the National Tutorial Program (NTP) which is part of the ESDA's International Council on Education.

Mark Hogsett

Mark Hogsett received a Bachelors degree from U. C. Berkeley in 1980.  Mr. Hogsett is currently the manager of the Applications Engineering Group at Novx Corporation for consulting services and product development.  He has held the position of Senior Consulting Engineer for the Ion Systems Strategic Resources Group.  He has also written statistical analysis and systems test software for the remote monitoring industry.

 Over the past decade, Mr. Hogsett has conducted a wide variety of electrostatic audits and investigations worldwide for customers in the semiconductor, disk drive, EMS, flat panel, medical device industries and government.   In addition, he has performed interference investigations and audits for ESD, EMI, and RFI for semiconductor and flat panel manufacturing.   He has also performed semiconductor tool audits in Asia, Europe and the United States under the SEMI E78 standard as well as reticle electrostatic risk investigations in conjunction with Dupont Photomasks.

 Mr. Hogsett is actively involved as a contributing member of the SEMI ESD Task Force.  He is also a member of the ESD Association and Silicon Valley ESD Association (SiVa) and has given numerous technical presentations at ESD Discovery symposiums in the United States and Asia.  In addition, he is a member of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) and the American Statistical Association (ASA)

Vladimir Kraz  MSEE, MSME Vladimir Kraz is founder and president of Credence Technologies, a manufacturer of ESD and EMC instrumentation.  Mr. Kraz is author of numerous papers in trade publications on the topics of ESD and electromagnetic compliance, as well as a number of U.S. and foreign patents.   Mr. Kraz is a member of IEEE, ESDA and AES. He is a Chair of SEMI EMC Task Force, a member of SEMI ESD Task Force, a member of ESDA Ionization and Handlers Standards Committees.    Prior to starting Credence Technologies, Mr. Kraz worked in leading companies in Silicon Valley in areas of wireless communication, such as WCDMA, GSM, WLAN, etc., mobile computing and others. Mr. Kraz holds MSEE and MSME degrees.