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ELECTRONIC DEVICE FAILURE ANALYSIS | VOLUME 18 NO. 1
38
ISTFA 2015 WRAP-UP
James Demarest, ISTFA 2015 General Chair
IBM
EDFAAO (2016) 1:38-39 1537-0755/$19.00 ©ASM International®
The 41st International Symposium for Testing and
Failure Analysis (ISTFA 2015) occurred in Portland,
Ore., this past November. The theme of the confer-
encewas “FollowtheData,”
which appears time and
time again in our profes-
sional lives. The conference
was anoutstanding success
from my point of view, as
we had the highest confer-
ence attendance in thepast
five years and, more impor-
tantly, everyone I talked to
was enjoying themselves
and learning something
new.
KEYNOTE
SPEAKER: DR. ALBERT LIN, NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER–SEEING THE
UNKNOWN: THE HIGH-TECH SEARCH
FOR GENGHIS KHAN
The keynote speaker, Dr. Albert Lin, was phenomenal.
He spoke for an hour about his experiences traveling the
worldand, specifically, his useof noninvasive technologies
todetermine the locationof Genghis Khan’s tomb. In addi-
tion, Albert was one of the first to use crowd sourcing to
sift through vast amounts of imaging data to narrowdown
his search. I was captivated by the very personal story he
told, inspired by his enthusiasm and use of technology,
and greatly enjoyed my personal conversations with him
at the conference on the eclectic topics we covered. On
one or two rare occasions during Albert’s talk, I was able
to look back at the rest of the audience and see everyone
else equally engrossed in his tale.
THE TECHNICAL PROGRAM
The conference launched on October 31 with the
short courses, followed by the main block of tutorials.
These were organized by Susan Li of Spansion, Mayue
Xie of Intel, and their team. The tutorials ran as a triple
track on Sunday, and I hope everyone was able to take
advantage of the educa-
tional opportunity they
represent. Two tutorials
were integrated into the
technical program this
year; these covered med-
ical devices and package-
level fault isolation.
Sam Subramanian of
Freescale did an amazing
job as Technical Program
Chair. He and his team of
session chairs put together
a great week of more than
60 podiumpresentations and a very full poster session. As
we have come to expect at ISTFA, the talks ran the gambit
of failure analysis topics, from microscopy to sample
preparation to electrical characterization. There was
even a verywell-represented counterfeitmicroelectronics
technical session, which contained five talks.
BeckyHoldford greatly assisted all of the platformpre-
sentations in her role as Audio/Visual Chair. I’msure all the
presenters benefited from her wealth of experience and
knowledge. I know the poster session was very popular
this year as well. The photo and video contests went off
without a hitch. Rose Ring of Globalfoundries oversaw the
video contest, which had at least five video submissions.
SOCIAL EVENT, PANEL DISCUSSION,
AND USER GROUPS
The social event, organized by Rick Livengood of Intel,
was held at the Punch Bowl Social in downtown Portland;
it was a tremendous success. Approximately 300 people
attended the event, and it was a great way to start off the
conference week on Monday night. The venue had some-
thing for everyone, and I saw many smiles on faces and
light sabers in hands throughout the evening.
Keynote Speaker Dr. Albert Lin addressing the audience