Over the past decades, the semiconductor industry has driven innovation after innovation as stewards of Moore’s Law. As we move forward, the challenges are even greater as we try to solve for exponential growth in compute and data while simultaneously addressing key challenges around energy efficiency and sustainability. In her talk, Dr. Duran will reflect briefly on the advances in semiconductor technologies that have enabled the technologies we take for granted today, then share recent results and our grand challenges as we continue to Moore’s Law into the future. Specifically, she will speak to advances and challenges in lithography, transistor, and interconnect scaling, including research on beyond-CMOS. She will close with sharing how recent innovations in 2.5D and 3D packaging are key to future system optimizations to meet growing industry needs.

Biography

Carolyn R. Duran is a Vice President and Engineering Manager in Components Research at Intel Corporation. In this role, Carolyn leads advanced process and materials research to invent, develop and demonstrate viable revolutionary technologies necessary for Intel’s continued leadership in the industry. 

Over her 25-year career, Duran’s scope has spanned technology development, supply chain, including responsible minerals, and a corporate charter enabling memory and IO technologies in the product groups. 

Duran is currently serving as the Immediate Past President of the Materials Research Society and is an adjunct professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University. A recognized industry leader, Duran was named on Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business 1000” list in 2016 and ranked no. 2 on Business Insider’s “Most Powerful Women Engineers in the World” list in 2014.

Duran received her bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and her Ph.D. in the same field from Northwestern University. She holds five patents in the area of semiconductor process engineering.