Careers in the Semiconductor Industry
Monday, February 27, 2023, 5:30 – 6:30 PM CST
In a field where price-performance improvement is tantamount and innovation is highly competitive, company culture and performance expectations vary widely. Join our panel this week to learn more about various careers that exist within the semiconductor industry. Our panelists will discuss what drew them to their current role (or what dissuaded them from others), the types of projects that populate their days, the competencies that are required to be successful in these types of careers, and their advice for how to use your scientific training to support your entry into this career path.
Joaquin M. Alzola, PhD
Process Engineer, Intel
Joaquin grew up in a town called Vienna, Virginia, just outside the nation’s capital. He attended Cornell University in New York, pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemistry, and became involved in independent research during his junior year, developing synthetic methodology for conjugated materials. Following graduation, Joaquin attended Northwestern University in Illinois for his PhD, working in developing organic materials for solar cell applications. He moved to Portland, Oregon in 2021 to pursue a career with Intel. Outside of work, he enjoys boxing, hiking around the city, playing pool, and attending concerts.
Aleksander Prominski, PhD
Product Engineer, Lam Research
Aleksander is a product engineer at Lam Research and works on developing wafer fabrication equipment for plasma etch that enables sub-20 nm logic nodes and 3D NAND memory applications. He also drives projects that focus on improving environmental sustainability in the semiconductor industry. Aleksander received his PhD from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago in 2022. During his graduate studies he was developing photoelectrochemical materials for bioelectronic stimulation and tools for machine vision-enabled autonomous bioengineering research. While at the University of Chicago, he worked with the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship on developing strategies for translating academic discoveries in nanomaterials into solutions for biomedical applications.
EW Malachosky, PhD
Senior Process Engineer, QDIR
EW is the second employee of and a Senior Process Engineer at QDIR, a nanotechnology startup that seeks to make inexpensive infrared detectors using quantum dots. His primary responsibility is to create the process that manufactures the detectors, though he spends time reviewing grants, talking to customers and potential investors, and reviewing manufacturing space as well. Before QDIR, EW was a Lithography Process Engineer at Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon, where he worked on a variety of projects across the 14, 10, and 7 nm nodes. EW earned his PhD from the University of Chicago’s Department of Chemistry studying inorganic nanomaterials in the lab of Philippe Guyot- Sionnest.
Dana Sauter, PhD
Global Customer Quality Director, Entegris
Dana Sauter is the Global Customer Quality Director at Entegris, previously CMC Materials, with over 10 years’ experience in the semiconductor industry. In this role, her team is responsible for interfacing with the customer to solve and enable solutions to their quality issues. Prior to this, Dana served as global supplier quality manager for the Slurry, Pads and Electronic Chemical business units, overseeing incoming raw material quality. She started her journey at CMC Materials in 2013 in R&D slurry, moving to Commercialization, facilitating technology for new node development. Dana received a bachelor’s in chemistry from Albion College, Albion, MI, a Ph.D in analytical chemistry from Northwestern University and recently a MBA from the University of Illinois. She is die-hard Chicago Bears and Sky fan.
