Luiz M Franca-Neto

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT LUIZ M FRANCA-NETO

I am a technologist and technical leader. I was trained in semiconductor device physics (transport in high-electric field and low noise transistor design for RF, microwave and millimeter-wave applications*, Ph.D. Stanford University) and moved up the “technological food chain” starting at Intel Labs, Intel Corporation. There, I developed and worked on key technologies for digital, analog, RF, microwave and millimeter-wave SoC’s. I’d then continue my trajectory up the “technological food chain” towards communication systems, storage, networking systems and high-performance computing along 20 years in large industrial facilities. I was greatly influenced by my Dad (Prof. A. Franca) and his words (not verbatim) “you can be anything you want, provided you’re a scientist first”. In Dad’s generation, if you were sophisticated in math, you’d become a physicist. Engineers were seen as “glorified technicians”. In modern parlance, Dad would probably consider them “implementers” or “hackers”. Given that influence, in my career, I always pushed to attack technical challenges from fundamental/scientific principles. Since I stayed in Industry after Stanford, I also pushed for relevant innovation and impact in my results and solutions. Some of the technologies I created found their way to commercial products, came to be represented in around 100 granted US Patents, 15+ peer-reviewed technical and scientific publications, became some of the most valued patents in companies for which I worked, or established world records at their first publications.^More recently, I realized vehicles had become platforms for high performance computing with an unprecedented set of multidisciplinary technical challenges. I felt this provided the field where I can bring to bear all my accumulated knowledge and skills from diverse technical domains. I want to have several years of impactful technical contributions to advances and innovations for the car of the was the first to predict and experimentally confirm straining the silicon lattice and properly doping the channel can produce ultra-low noise silicon transistors for RF/Micro/Millimeter wave applications. Since 90nm, Intel transistors have used strained silicon. One gets low noise transistors in Intel processors today even if (s)he doesn’t care.(Ph.D. thesis)^I created “Optimum Pumping method” for the design of millimeter wave circuits operating close to transistor’s fmax and demonstrated the first 100 GHz (fundamental frequency) VCOs on 90nm CMOS (ft~60GHz, fmax~110GHz). Method tracks fmax.(ISSCC 2004)