Biography

Dr. Neil Goldsman

Dr. Akin Akturk

Dr. Siddharth Potbhare

Dr. James M. McGarrity


Dr. Neil Goldsman is co-founder and President of CoolCAD Electronics, LLC. He is also a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Maryland at College Park. At the University, Dr. Goldsman directs the Mixed Signal VLSI Design Laboratory, Distributed Sensor and Communication Networks Group, and the Semiconductor Simulation Laboratory. His recent work has focused on ad-hoc sensor networks, high temperature and cryogenic electronics, and semiconductor device modeling. He regularly serves on the executive, technical and organizing committees of leading international professional conferences, including the International Semiconductor Device Research Symposium and the International Conference on Simulation of Semiconductor Processes and Devices. Prof. Goldsman was the technical director for the Maryland Governor's Institute of Technology program. His research has attracted more than $4 million of support to the University of Maryland. His work has been sponsored by leading governmental and industrial organizations including NSF, SRC, NSA, ARL, ONR, ARO, DHS, NIH, Intel Corp. and LSI Logic Corp. Dr. Goldsman is the recipient of the IEEE Dasher Award; the NSF Research Initiation Award; the University of Maryland’s George Corcoran; Invention the Year and Business Plan Awards; and Cornell University’s Post Foundation Scholarship. Goldsman has published more than one hundred fifty peer-reviewed technical papers, and supervised the design of over fifty ICs. He has authored two electronics texts that have been used for courses at the University of Maryland. Recently, Dr. Goldsman has focused on commercializing his research, whereupon he received 7 patents and provisional patents in the last several years. Dr. Goldsman is also a serial entrepreneur. In 2004, Dr. Goldsman and a colleague founded TRX Systems, where he served as president. In 2007 he sold his portion of TRX, and focused on establishing two new high-tech companies. Dr. Goldsman received his Ph.D from Cornell University with a minor in Applied Physics and major in Electrical Engineering.



Dr. Akin Akturk is co-founder and Vice President of CoolCAD Electronics, LLC. Dr. Akturk earned his Ph.D. at the end of spring 2006 from the University of Maryland, College Park, which also awarded him with an M.S. degree in 2001. His recent research/work interests include performance modeling of nanoscale MOSFETs, and coupled thermal modeling of devices, and planar and three-dimensional integrated circuits. He has done extensive non-isothermal modeling of devices such as SOI-MOSFETs and MOSFETs, with silicon or heterojunctions in their channels. His analyses cover a wide temperature spectrum ranging from cryogenic temperatures to couple hundred degrees above room temperature. Additionally, he developed novel algorithms to couple device operation to chip heating and performance. He participated in the design and investigation of three-dimensional heterogeneous integration technologies, where he mainly focused on self-heating effects. Through simulation, he demonstrated the concept of using thermal conduits to remove heat from the hot spots of the chip. He along with his colleagues was awarded a provisional patent for heat removal by US patent office. In addition, he investigated novel device designs including carbon nanotubes and carbon nanotube embedded transistors. He has published various papers on full-chip heating and novel MOSFET configurations. He also has done several circuit and layout designs, some of which were fabricated through a fabrication service.



Dr. Siddharth Potbhare is a Senior Scientist and Vice President at CoolCAD Electronics, LLC. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2008. He is working on developing advanced physical models and characterizing the operation of Silicon Carbide MOSFETs and DMOSFETs at high temperatures. His research is focused on understanding the physics of transport in SiC devices, and on modeling their performance in DC and switching environments such as power converter circuits. He has published many papers on SiC device modeling, algorithm development, and device characterization in peer-reviewed journals and different industry conferences. His interests include novel semiconductor materials, and design of advanced energy efficient microelectronic devices and circuits. He earned the B.E. (B.S.) degree in electronics engineering from the M. S. University, Vadodara, India in 2001 and the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, USA, in 2005.

Dr.James M. McGarrity is the Director for Strategy and Planning at CoolCAD Electronics, LLC. Prior to his current position, Dr. McGarrity was Senior Research Scientist (ST) for the Sensors and Electron Devices Directorate of the Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, Maryland. This position was attained in April 1991 in recognition of his career achievements in the study of radiation effects in semiconductor devices and radiation hardening of integrated circuits. As Senior Research Scientist, Dr. McGarrity performed research to improve the survivability of electronics and has served as technical advisor to the several other government agencies. Prior to that assignment he served as the Chief of the Radiation Effects Physics Branch of the former Harry Diamond Laboratories. His other assignments have been Deputy for Radiation Hard Technology for the OSD Very High Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC) Office (1983 – 1988) and R&D supervisor and researcher in radiation effects in electronics at HDL. Dr. McGarrity is a Fellow of the IEEE for his radiation effects research on silicon metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) devices and has over eighty journal publications.