Awardee Interviews | Biography: Dr. Kathryn W. Guarini
Dr. Kathryn W. Guarini
Kathryn Wilder Guarini is a research staff member and Manager of the 45 nm Front End Integration Group at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Her group's mission is to evaluate and narrow CMOS device options for the 45 nm high performance logic technology node. She also leads IBM's research team working on three dimensional integrated circuits and has developed techniques for building multi-layer circuits that are compatible with state-of-the-art CMOS technology. Dr. Guarini also explores novel nanotechnology techniques and applications, and has demonstrated several potentially important technological applications of self-assembling materials, work recently detailed in Scientific American (March 2004) and in numerous national publications. Her work on double-gate transistor fabrication, wafer bonding, metal gate MOSFETs, scanning probe lithography, and micromachining is also noteworthy.
Dr. Guarini is author of more than 45 technical publications, including a book and book chapter, and holds 8 U.S. patents. She has also presented her work at numerous technical conferences and is active in conference organizing. In 2003, she was named to the TR100 list of top 100 young innovators by MIT's Technology Review magazine. Dr. Guarini is especially passionate about mentoring, inspiring, and recruiting scientists and engineers of all ages, especially women, and participates actively in IBM's Family Science, Honors Math & Science, and Women in Technology Campus Liaison programs, as well as National Engineers Week, where she regularly presents lectures, teaches classes, and advises students.
Dr. Guarini completed her Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University in 1999 under the direction of Professor Calvin F. Quate, where she developed a novel high resolution maskless lithography system using scanning probes. Her B.S. degree was in applied physics from Yale University, where she was editor-in-chief of The Yale Herald, Yale's weekly newspaper. Prior to joining IBM, Dr. Guarini worked in semiconductor research as an intern at both Hewlett-Packard and Advanced Micro Devices. Dr. Guarini is a member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Women in Science, and Sigma Xi.