Becky Peterson named new Director of the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility
Peterson’s goals are to grow the reach and impact of the facility on issues that affect us all
Prof. Becky Peterson has been named the new director of the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility (LNF). Serving the entire University of Michigan as well as external users from academia and industry, the LNF is a world-class cleanroom facility with over 13,500 sq. ft. of state-of-the-art cleanroom space that provides advanced micro- and nano-fabrication equipment and expertise to its users.
“My goals for the LNF,” says Peterson, “are to grow the reach and impact of the facility on issues that affect us all: building a more sustainable environment, improving health outcomes, and facilitating innovation in micro- and nano-fabrication of materials, devices and systems to improve the quality of life for all people. As part of this mission, I will seek to continue engaging a broad spectrum of U-M researchers as well as external academics and industry, and continue LNF’s synergistic work with other College core facilities.”
The LNF provides highly specialized equipment for fabricating a diverse array of devices, including biomedical sensors and neural probes, memory technologies for neural network processors, optical LEDs and photodetectors, and micro-mechanical accelerometers and gyroscopes, just to name a few.
Its professional staff, led by Dr. Sandrine Martin, support the facilities and tools, and work with a multi-disciplinary community of more than 450 users from Colleges and Schools across the University of Michigan, along with external academic and industrialorganizations. The LNF also supports lab activities for courses specializing in micro- and nano-fabrication. It is housed in the EECS building on North Campus.
Peterson relies on the LNF for her own research, which is focused on developing new thin film technologies and devices to enable “Electronics on Anything,” and using ultra-wide bandgap oxide semiconductors to develop new devices for high voltage power electronics.
A leader in the professional community, she serves as Chair of the Optoelectronics, Displays and Imaging Committee of the 2020 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), is Technical Program Chair of the 2020 Device Research Conference, and Treasurer of the 2019-2021 Electronic Materials Conference. In 2019, she was on sabbatical leave as a Visiting Scientist at the Paul Drude Institute for Solid State Electronics in Berlin, served on the National Science Foundation’s Division of Materials Research Committee of Visitors, and was a Guest Associate Editor for the APL Materials Special Issue on Wide Bandgap Oxides.
Peterson is the recipient of multiple awards including an NSF CAREER award, a DARPA Young Faculty Award and Director’s Fellowship, and an Elizabeth C. Crosby Research Award. A gifted teacher, she received the U-M Henry Russel Award which recognizes extraordinary accomplishments in research and teaching.