|
External
Ph.D. Program at Clarkson University
The
off-campus option for the Ph.D. is a graduate program offered
by Clarkson University to qualified outstanding individuals
who wish to maintain their full time jobs in industry while
pursuing Ph.D. degrees. The program is most suited for those
individuals who have had extensive work experience related
to their doctoral research topics and cannot afford to take
an extensive leave of absence from their jobs. Professors
W. Wilcox, A. Busnaina, and P. Hopke were instrumental in
establishing the program and obtaining the approval of the
New York State Education Department for the exemption of the
one-year on-campus requirement.
The
first person to receive a Ph.D. degree through this program
was William America, who completed his Ph.D. thesis under
the direction of Professors S.V. Babu and Raymond Mackay while
he was working for Kodak and then IBM. His doctoral research
on chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) resulted in a number
of patents and publications. One of his results led to successful
commercialization by Ferro Electronic Material Systems, a
New York State company. Currently, Dr. America is a Senior
Engineer at IBM Microelectronics in East Fishkill, New York.
Recently he accepted an adjunct professorship from the Chemistry
Department at Clarkson University.
Currently,
there are three students in Clarkson University's off-campus
Ph.D. program. Mr. Paul LeFevre is a widely respected expert
in metal CMP working for Fujimi Corporation. Previously he
was an IBM assignee at International SEMATECH serving as the
copper CMP program manager. Paul's Ph.D. project involves
the measurement of friction behavior of consumables at the
wafer level. Mr. Guomin Bian from Dynea is an expert in fine
particle synthesis and applications. One of the research projects
he is involved in has attracted a great deal of attention
from the metal CMP community. The Clarkson University-Dynea
team demonstrated for the first time that copper CMP can be
best accomplished using ultra-soft, hydrophilic, and pure
organic abrasive particles. Finally Mr. David Tysiac, who
is a full time employee at Ferro, recently joined the program
and is working towards his Ph.D. David's main research focus
is on particle-pad interactions, an issue that is fundamentally
important to the CMP community. All three current students
in the off-campus options are working with Professor Yuzhuo
Li.
Everyone
who is familiar with the off-campus option agree that the
program not only offers a unique opportunity to talented individuals
in industry to continue their education, but also has great
significance in increasing the diversity of the graduate student
body and the research portfolio of the graduate program at
Clarkson University.
Professional
Training Courses Offered to Wyeth Employees
CAMP Professor Yuzhuo Li and his colleagues are working closely
with Dr. Gregory Slack of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, to organize
and offer practical training courses to the employees at Wyeth
Pharmaceuticals in Rouses Point, New York. In addition to
the traditional lecture-exam format, Professor Li and Dr.
Slack will experiment with a new format which requires the
trainees to demonstrate their level of competency in operating
state-of- the-art analytical instrumentation at the end of
the training program. The certification process will be directly
linked to the standard operating procedures required and practiced
by the industry. The topics to be covered by the training
courses range from common analytical techniques such as FT-IR
and particle sizing to emerging techniques such as rapid screening
with NIR. This training program is part of the membership
agreement between CAMP and Wyeth, as well as a joint commitment
in developing more innovative continuing education programs.
In the past CAMP has offered onsite courses / workshops at
Wyeth taught by Professors Mueller, Li and Rasmussen.
|
