College of Engineering hires key scholar for its microelectronics chair
Virginia Tech's College of Engineering has successfully recruited Marius Orlowski, a renowned international scholar who holds 59 patents with 28 pending. He will come to Blacksburg from his current position with the Crolles Alliance based in France.
The French based Crolles Alliance is comprised of STMicroelectronics, NXP, and Freescale. These three companies are considered global industrial leaders in the semiconductor technology industry.
“Dr. Orlowski is an excellent choice for the Virginia Microelectronics Consortium (VMEC) Chaired Professorship at Virginia Tech because of his excellent international reputation and his extensive industry experience coupled with an outstanding publication record. His vision for the future research opportunities for university research in the microelectronics field is exciting to the Virginia Tech research community,” said James S. Thorp, head of Virginia Tech’s Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Prior to his position with the Crolles Alliance, Orlowski was a research scientist at The German Aerospace Center in 1983-84, and then joined Siemens in 1984 where was the project leader in process simulation and modeling. In 1989 Motorola Research labs in Austin, Texas, recruited him, and in 1995 he became the director of the Motorola Moscow Research Laboratory. In 2002 he returned to the U.S. to be the staff manager for Advanced Device Development Group for Freescale in Austin Texas. He joined Crolles in 2006.
“The College of Engineering is extremely pleased that Dr. Orlowski has agreed to join our faculty. He is a pioneer in the microelectronics field and has more than 150 publications in scientific journals and conference proceedings. He has been the keynote speaker at a score of premier conferences, and he has received numerous honors from industry including innovation awards from Motorola and Freescale,” said Richard Benson, dean of the college.
Orlowski has his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from Tuebingen University in Germany. He was an assistant professor at Tuebingen University from 1979 to 1981, a lecturer at Purdue University in 1982-83, and a research associate for a brief period at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
VMEC, created in 1996 to serve the microelectronics industry in the Commonwealth, consists of the following colleges and universities: George Mason University, Old Dominion University, the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, and the College of William and Mary. A chair was awarded to each of the six universities.
Support for start-up funds for this unique cooperative venture was granted by the 1998 Virginia General Assembly when it agreed to provide $4 million in the 1998-2000 biennium to the Virginia Semiconductor Educational Endowment.
In July of 2007, Forbes.com listed Virginia at the top of its "Best States for Business" list for the second straight year, and its microelectronics industry is key to this recognition.
