edfas.org ELECTRONIC DEVICE FAILURE ANALYSIS | VOLUME 28 NO. 1 50 GUEST COLUMN EDFAS MENTORSHIP PROGRAM: A GROWTH OPPORTUNITY THAT GOES BOTH WAYS Lun Chan EDFAS Student Board Member Phil Kaszuba, FASM EDFAS Board Member phil.kaszuba@gmail.com Kaszuba If you’ve found your way to this guest column, you likely have, or had, a mentor in your career journey. This may be your high school chemistry teacher, the college professor of your introductory physics course, the engineer you first encountered at your local ASM/ EDFAS chapter meeting, or perhaps some person you met at a casual dinner. No matter who they are, they have most likely influenced your life in a meaningful way. When the authors (Phil and Lun) first met at ISTFA 2023, they were in resonance about what it means to have a mentor. After retiring from IBM as a senior failure analysis engineer, Phil reflected on some of the moments that mattered to him most. In one such example, as an ISTFA session chair, he coached a nervous young engineer who was giving his first presentation. That “tap on the shoulder” later blossomed into a confident, successful talk and the genesis of an implicit mentorship. Lun shared a similar experience from the other perspective, with mentors who were pivotal to the launch of his career. By the end of their conversation, Phil and Lun found themselves asking: Could we create this kind of experience for the broader EDFAS student and young professional community? Things are always easier said than done. If so highly valued, shouldn’t such a program already exist? One major challenge they observed is that few young professionals recognize failure analysis as a career path in the microelectronics industry, and those in related roles often experience it only indirectly. Senior professionals, meanwhile, tend to stay within their existing networks. To break this paradigm, the authors conceptualized the pilot EDFAS Mentorship Program in early 2024. The program aimed at initially connecting five industry mentors to five students and young professionals from all over the world. Instead of the usual “here’s your mentor or mentee—see you later” approach, they set periodic checkpoints to assess the mentor-mentee relationship and better understand what the mentors and mentees could accomplish together. After roughly seven months, the official program came to an end with each mentor-mentee pair having the option to continue their connection informally or go their separate ways. (The authors note that most pairs continued their relationships going forward.) The pilot program concluded by soliciting feedback from each of the mentors and mentees to better understand the successes and struggles from the participants’ viewpoints. How can this program be improved going forward? Of particular significance is that all the mentees were students who had no direct career exposure to the FA industry. Most of the mentees shared that working with a mentor helped them feel more prepared for careers in microelectronics FA, and more confident in navigating their paths forward. Mentees of Efi Moyal and Rose Ring specifically emphasized their excitement in the training and career opportunities that were made available to them, which otherwise may not have been present. Mentees of Kevin Distelhurst and Bryan Tracy expressed gratitude for the advice they received as they were navigating out of academia. The mentees overall were satisfied, appreciative, and thankful. The authors observed some surprising results on the mentor side. Greg Johnson reported that his mentee, Malex Ma, helped him with the use of a modern computing algorithm: “I was showing some of my work with raytracing, the plotting of electron trajectories from Casino, Monte Carlo Chan
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