SEMATECH Names New President

-- Semiconductor International, 6/1/2001

Bob Helms (Source: International SEMATECH)

Starting July 1, Bob Helms will lead International SEMATECH (Austin, Texas), as it continues its mission to promote industry consensus and facilitate industrywide global cooperation in semiconductor R&D among its 13 member companies. Helms will replace Mark Melliar-Smith, who has served as president and CEO since 1997. The two executives will work closely during the transition period, which officially ends Sept. 1, but Melliar-Smith will stay on through the end of the year to ensure continuity.

Helms is currently corporate vice president and director of Silicon Technology Research at Texas Instruments Inc. (TI, Dallas), responsible for the company's advanced R&D in silicon process, equipment and materials technology. He will take an extended leave of absence from TI to serve at International SEMATECH. Not a newcomer to the consortium, he most recently held the position of vice chair of the senior technology advisory board, the Executive Steering Council (ESC). Helms has served on the ESC for three years, and is familiar with the consortium's technical programs, operations and strategic direction.

O.B. Bilous, chairman of the board of directors for SEMATECH, commented that Helms has proven leadership abilities, while understanding the consortium and its operations. "The board believes that Bob has just the right qualities to capitalize on the successes of International SEMATECH during Mark's tenure, and to lead the consortium in its mission of realizing the roadmap and building industrywide cooperation," he said in a statement.

As a full professor at Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.) from 1980 to 2000, Helms led research efforts on semiconductor processing and new materials, guiding research into understanding the Si/SiO₂ interface. Helms is professor emeritus at Stanford, where he also received a Ph.D. and master's degree in electrical engineering. He holds a B.S. in engineering physics from the University of California, Berkeley.

"I look forward to joining the team at International SEMATECH and working to serve the needs of our 13 member companies," Helms said in a statement. Those companies are AMD (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Agere Systems (Murray Hill, N.J.), Conexant (Newport Beach, Calif.), Hewlett-Packard (Palo Alto, Calif.), Hynix Semiconductor (formerly Hyundai Electronics Ind., Seoul), IBM (Armonk, N.Y.), Infineon Technologies (Munich, Germany), Intel (Santa Clara, Calif.), Motorola (Schaumburg, Ill.), TI, Philips (Eindhoven, Netherlands), STMicroelectronics (Geneva), and TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

Helms will be International SEMATECH's fourth president, preceded by Mark Melliar-Smith, Bill Spencer (1990-1997) and Robert Noyce (1988-1990).

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