Nanomaterials Application Center director named SPIE Fellow

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
March 8, 2007

Walt Trybula, director of the Nanomaterials Application Center (NAC) at Texas State University-San Marcos, has been named a SPIE Fellow for 2007 by the International Society for Optical Engineering.

The Society will honor 56 new fellows this year. Fellows are members of distinction who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics and imaging. They are honored for their technical achievement, for their service to the general optics community, and to SPIE in particular. More than 480 SPIE members have become fellows since the Society’s inception in 1955.

“The annual recognition of fellows provides an opportunity for us to acknowledge outstanding members for their service to the general optics community,” says Brian Culshaw, SPIE President.

Trybula was honored for specific contributions to the semiconductor industry including driving technology to accelerate emerging lithography development.

Trybula has an outstanding record of published journal articles, conference proceedings and presentations (numbering more than 200). These publications have primarily focused on current lithography issues, as well as the search for the next-generation technology to succeed optical. His efforts have been directly related to investigating the implementation of immersion lithography, in terms of cost effectiveness, timing, and technical difficulty. More recently, Trybula has been evaluating the feasibility of maskless lithography (ML2) as potential solution to high mask costs.

Trybula has had a direct impact on commercial progress by helping the industry generate the infrastructure and expedite the development of the tools needed for immersion lithography. He organized (and conducted) a number of immersion workshops, as well as informal Immersion Task Force meetings. In fact, he was credited with reducing the development time for immersion by up to two years, for which he received the SEMATECH Corporate Excellence Award in 2004. Currently, he is with both Texas State’s Nanomaterials Application Center and the Trybula Foundation, where his emphasis in applying semiconductor developments to expediting commercialization in the emerging nanotechnology field.  In addition, he serves on the Steering Committee for numerous conferences, symposia, and Texas working groups.

The International Society for Optical Engineering is dedicated to advancing scientific research and engineering applications of optical, photonic, imaging and optoelectronic technologies through its meetings, education programs and publications. For more information, contact media@spie.org or visit online at http://spie.org.