Dr. Mark Pinto, Applied Materials CTO, Receives Prestigious 2008 J.J. Ebers Award

The IEEE Electron Devices Society today honored Dr. Mark Pinto, chief technology officer of Applied Materials, Inc., with its prestigious 2008 J.J. Ebers award, which is considered to be one of the technical community’s highest honors. Dr. Pinto was presented with the award at the 2008 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco in recognition of “his contributions to widely applied semiconductor technology simulation tools.”

Dr. Pinto obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1985, where he co-developed the first general purpose 2D device simulator PISCES-II. This device simulator became the industry standard for over 10 years and formed the basis of commercial simulators still used today. He then joined Bell Laboratories and led efforts to develop many enabling computational models and algorithms that have been widely implemented for understanding and predicting phenomena over a broad range of applications, including silicon, III-V materials, and optoelectronics. Through his enabling work, technology simulation became a fundamental tool underlying many generations of semiconductor technology.

Dr. Pinto currently is a senior vice president at Applied Materials where he serves as general manager of the Energy and Environmental Solutions Group, in addition to his role as CTO. As part of his efforts to extend the Company’s nanomanufacturing technologies, he led the establishment of Applied’s rapidly growing solar business, which was recently honored with the Wall Street Journal’s 2008 Technology Innovation Award for its SunFab™ Thin Film Line.

The J.J. Ebers award, established in 1971, is intended to foster progress in electron devices and to commemorate Jewell James Ebers, whose contributions shaped the understanding and technology of electron devices. The award annually recognizes and honors accomplishments of unusual merit in the electron device field and is given for outstanding technical contributions to electron devices. Previous winners include Herbert Kroemer, Andrew Grove and Simon Sze.