Snodgrass wins Best Student Paper Award at CS MANTECH

7/9/2009 Charlie Johnson, ECE ILLINOIS

ECE graduate student William Snodgrass was recognized with the Best Student Paper Award at the Compound Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology Conference (CS MANTECH).

Written by Charlie Johnson, ECE ILLINOIS

William Snodgrass
William Snodgrass

ECE graduate student William Snodgrass was recognized with the Best Student Paper Award at the Compound Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology Conference (CS MANTECH). Snodgrass received the award at the 2009 conference in Tampa, Florida in late May.

“It’s exciting to be recognized, especially by industry leaders in this field,“ said Snodgrass. The award includes a $1,000 cash prize, and Snodgrass plans to put the money straight into the bank. “I have a wife and a 14 month old daughter, so $1,000 is a lot of money on a grad student’s salary,” he said.

The research that Snodgrass presented to CS MANTECH was conducted under the direction of ECE Professor Milton Feng. The paper came in two parts. The primary part was to report the performance results of devices invented in the Micro and Nanotechnology Lab in conjunction with the research group of ECE Professor Keh-Yung Cheng. Snodgrass, who did the design, fabrication, and testing of the high-frequency transistors, studied the cutoff frequencies, trying to determine the highest frequency that they could still perform as transistors. The secondary part of Snodgrass’ paper was to look towards the future of these high-frequency transistors and try to determine potential applications if the devices could be scaled down further and further.

“Right now the application side of this technology is a little further out,” said Snodgrass. “The government’s primary interest right now is to try and produce circuits operating in the sub-millimeter wave frequency band. And the primary application for that would be in imaging. Terahertz imaging could be used to produce an optical image that could see through clouds, smoke, or clothing for security applications.”

Snodgrass also detailed potential biological applications for the emerging technology in his paper. “We could use the technology for chemical detection because certain compounds happen to be resonant at these types of frequencies, so by exciting them, we can detect their resonating molecules,” he said. Snodgrass hopes that such imaging techniques could be used to examine different types of tissue in medical imaging, or for detection efforts in national security applications.

Snodgrass began working with Feng as an undergraduate during the tail end of his junior year, and he chose to stay at Illinois to pursue graduate studies.  “I basically had one year of research work done with Professor Feng’s group, and so it made sense to just stay here and continue,” he said. Snodgrass, who was a Bronze Tablet honoree for his undergraduate work, hopes to finish his PhD at Illinois in August and eventually begin working in an industrial context.

“I plan to go into industry but I plan to stay in an advanced technology development role while I work in industry,” said Snodgrass.

More money for diapers and baby food, he supposes.


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This story was published July 9, 2009.