Ara Philipossian

Dr. Philipossian has been a professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Arizona since 2001 where he holds the Koshiyama Chair of Planarization. Since its establishment in 2004, he has also been the Co-Founder, President and CEO of Araca Incorporated, the premier provider of services and equipment to the polishing and planarization industry worldwide.

He received his BS, MS and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University in 1983, 1985 and 1992, respectively. From 1992 to 2001, he was the Materials Technology Manager at Intel Corporation (Santa Clara, CA USA) responsible for development, characterization, implementation and sustaining of new and existing CMP and post-CMP cleaning consumables, low k dielectrics and electroplating chemicals. From 1986 to 1992, he worked at Digital Equipment Corporation (Hudson, MA USA) as a process development manager focusing on thermal silicon oxidation, diffusion, LPCVD of dielectric and gate electrodes, and wafer cleaning technology.

Dr. Philipossian has authored approximately 150 archival journal publications and about 200 articles in conference proceedings. He holds 28 patents in the area of semiconductor processing and device fabrication.