in a military family in Southeast Asia at the middle of the 20th century, she was expected to do well. But the death of Nguyen's father, a soldier, left the family destitute. Young Bich-Yen might have expected to go to work to help her mother support her siblings, but family pride said "No!" Mom worked in a military commissary so Bich-Yen could continue at boarding school, then sent her off to college in the U.S. While she was at the University of Texas, married and beginning her own family, the Vietnam War ground to its inexorable close, turning many Vietnamese, including her own mother and siblings, into refugees. Three brothers became "Boat People," escaping over the ocean, and Bich-Yen, who had already begun leading resettlement efforts for her countrymen, rescued her family and helped her brothers go to college, too.
Into the Swirl
Graduating with a B.Sc. in chemical engineering in 1977, the year the Commodore Pet, Apple II, and Radio Shack TRS-80 blew the doors off the data-processing priesthood, Bich-Yen Nguyen dived into the Computer Revolution. Her first job as a plant chemist for the City of Austin didn't keep her long. A little more than two years after starting work, Nguyen joined Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector, supervising engineers and techs making IC wafers, boosting the quality of film deposition while learning the intricate steps of semiconductor manufacturing.
Four years after signing on, Nguyen had learned enough to become a senior member of the Technical Staff. The results were dramatic: A strong contributor to microprocessor development, she codeveloped and implemented new manufacturing processes, on the way establishing a reliability testing method that ensured products passed qualification tests on time. She also coinvented a silicon-rich nitride process to hike photo resolution in the wafer-making process.
Still going strong,
she developing several new devices: a new field-effect transistor power circuit, the TrenchFET, and a polysilicon thin-film transistor static random access memory module with a 10x reduction in "soft" error rates. That brought four patents and two defensive publications. Deep in the guts of chipmaking, she also developed the Pyroclean process for removing metallic contamination during IC fabrication. That brought another two publications, one issued patent, and several presentations inside and outside Motorola.
An initiative to identify and eliminate high-static RAM single-bit failure rates brought a 12-percent improvement in circuit yields and a Motorola Technical Achievement Award. Still another patent came from boosting microminiaturized static RAM production. And on and on.
Patent Powerhouse
In all, Nguyen has produced, either singly or with her team, 55 patents, with another 12 pending. Her team's most recent exploit is a whole new class of devices -- the Multiple Independent Gate FET, which has the potential to cut significantly the number of transistors needed to perform a function in an integrated circuit. She's won Motorola's Distinguished Innovator award and was elected to the Science Advisory Board Associates, an honor reserved for the top 2 percent of Motorola scientists and engineers. Not stopping there, in 2001, Nguyen won the company's highest honor, citation as a Dan Noble Fellow. That air is so rare that less than 5 percent of Science Advisory Board Associates, themselves Motorola's crème de la crème, are named Dan Noble Fellows each year.
In April 2004, as her superiors were preparing her nomination for a Woman of Color Technology Award, Bich-Yen Nguyen and her team presented nine disclosures deemed by Motorola's internal patent committee to be worthy of filing with the Patent and Trademark Office. And she's still not done yet.
A Few Quotes:
"Bich-Yen is a conscientious worker with absolute dedication to the assigned task. She makes effective use of her strong interpersonal skills to recruit and coordinate assistance from co-workers outside her group and to build a pervasive winning team spirit. This enables her to derive the best from each individual in the quest to develop innovative, manufacturing-worthy technology” Dr. Joe Mogab, Vice President of the Technical Staff and Director - Advanced Research and Development Laboratory - Mororola/Freescale Semiconductor Inc.
"I am most impressed with Bich-Yen’s grasp of business aspect of the technology she provides. As the Director of Manufacturing in the Dan Noble Center, I reply on Bich-Yen to provide solutions that enable us to compete and win in the marketplace. Her strong understanding of the importance of this aspect of her role makes her a leader in the technology arena. Her business focus is a strong enabler to our success. She has the strong respect of everyone in the organization for her proven ability to provide technical solution consistently” Bill McKean – Director of Operations, Dan Noble Center MOS13, Mororola/Freescale Semiconductor Inc.
"In addition to her individual technical accomplishments, what stand out equally well in my mind are her leadership, interpersonal skills and mentorship. She interacted superbly with a number of diverse groups within the company and outside for success of the projects she had undertaken. She mentored numerous technologists within Motorola and Universities within US and outside. She continues this effort with much vigor” Dr. Simon Thomas - Vice President of Motorola
"In this industry we are always looking fir the best models to follow. In my opinion when it come to leadership, technology and simply being human being we have found that here in Bich-Yen. She is living proof that big things come in small packages” Rosetta Santana – Diversity Director for Dan Noble Center - Mororola/Freescale Semiconductor Inc
"Nothing can be good enough to express my profound feeling for you. You are one of the greatest...Your spirit will keep on lighting up many people's hearts” Dr. Da Zhang - Senior Scientist - Mororola/Freescale Semiconductor Inc.
"BichYen I want to thank you for both myself and for all of the engineers through the years you have helped to train and mentor. It is very rare in this day and age for technical leaders such as yourself to make the time to spend with your more junior colleagues. You were always patient and looking for opportunities to collaborate, which this company needs much more of. I will always look back with a smile on my face when I think about things like searching for articles in the old Ed Bluestein library, the first trip to Jet Process Corporation in New Haven, bringing up the first RTCVD process tools in APRDL, and SEMFET, which was ahead of its time. In addition, you showed that you were not just looking for immediate technical results, but that you were also concerned with people establishing a good long term career path." Dr. Victor Wang - Strategist - Motorola/Freescale Semiconductor Inc.
"Technologist with the heart" Glaston Ford -Director of Communication – Motorola/Freescale Semiconductor Inc
" I am impressed how quickly Bich-Yen understood the opportunity to establish relations with academic researchers and how efficiently she arranged the practical details. I would also like to stress her human qualities-Kindness, modesty, opening and availability – that are greatly appreciated. Every time I heard speaking about Bich-Yen, it was with respect and admiration; this is true for people in my laboratory, in Motorola and in general in our professional community” Dr. Sorin Cristoloveanu – Director of Research, Institute for Microelectronics, France
"She is obviously "a mover and a shaker” who gets thing done. I and my post doc, Sergey Ushakov, have great respect for her intellect, energy and organization. Without her support, our project would progress much more slowly.” Dr Alexandra Novrotsky – Director and Distinguished Interdisciplinary Professor, University of California at Davis
" Bich-Yen is a resourceful, creative and solution-oriented person who frequently comes up with new and innovative approaches…..Her technical experience is valuable asset to our group by providing both technical/practical expertise and leadership. She is always the one to inspire the technical greener ad explore new technology approaches” Dr. Huibin Lu, Professor of Institute of Physics - Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
" The uniqueness about her mentorship is that she enables the creation of leaders and not the followers. She wants her employees to take initiatives and grow to their fullest extent. She never laid any tight boundaries which I had to adhere, while working for her…..Her unique way of mentoring has influenced me so much that I am using some of her mentoring techniques to train my graduate students…… Her openness and unselfishness distinguishes her from the rest of the typical technical managers” Dr. Navakanta Bhat – Professor of Indian Institute of Science, India
Bich-Yen Nguyen is a senior manager at Freescale Semiconductor and a Freescale/Motorola Dan Noble Fellow. After earning her degree in chemical engineering from the University of Texas, she joined Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector in 1980; Bich-Yen has been recognized for her leadership and research in developing Freescale/Motorola's CMOS technology for advanced integrated circuit products. She also was instrumental in transferring technology to production, which resulted in a competitive market entry position for Freescale/Motorola.
Her honors and awards include recipient of Distinguished Innovation award in 1991,
Motorola Science Advisory Board Associate in 1992,
High Impact Technology Award in 1997,
Dan Noble Fellow in 2001,
Master of Innovation Award in 2003.
In 2004, she received the 1st National Award “Women in Technology Lifetime Achievement Award”.
She holds 135 issued worldwide patents and have authored more than 70 technical papers on IC process, integration and device technologies.
She gave several invited talks, panel discussion and keynote speaker at the major international conference and university.
She also served as a committee member for IEDM, SISC conferences and currently serves as a steering and technical committee member of the International
Conference on Integrated Circuit Design and Technology.
Email: Bich-Yen.Nguyen<rlcm60@yahoo.com>
