Applied Materials, Inc. today announced that Dr. Omkaram (Om) Nalamasu, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, is the recipient of the 2023 IEEE Frederik Philips Award, which honors outstanding accomplishments in the management of research and development resulting in effective innovation in the electrical and electronics industry. Dr. Nalamasu received the award for leadership in research and development of semiconductor materials, processes and equipment.
“As a leader, Om has an impressive track record of identifying, incubating and commercializing new growth opportunities based on materials engineering technologies and capabilities developed in the semiconductor industry,” said Gary Dickerson, President and CEO of Applied Materials. “Congratulations to Om for this well-deserved recognition of his passion for technology and ability to lead and inspire successful engineering teams to accelerate innovation from concept to commercialization.”
Dr. Nalamasu is a world-renowned expert in materials science and has made seminal contributions to the fields of optical lithography and polymeric materials science and technology. He has a distinguished career of leadership in advancing materials engineering technologies and solutions for semiconductors and displays, and for enabling global inflections in new and adjacent markets to the wafer fab equipment industry.
As a champion for open innovation and a pioneer in value-added partnerships, Dr. Nalamasu has built a world-class team to extend Applied’s leadership in materials engineering. The strategic relationships he’s cultivated over the years with global academia, research institutes, customers, supply chain partners and government agencies have led to the creation of: the Materials Engineering Technology Accelerator (META) Center in New York, the Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and the New Jersey Nanotechnology Consortium (NJNC) at Bell Labs, one of the nation’s first nanotech public-private partnerships.
He also serves as President of Applied Ventures, LLC, the venture capital fund of Applied Materials, where he oversees strategic investments across the globe in all areas of deep tech, including semiconductors, display, AI, Big Data, Industry 4.0, energy efficiency, 5G, electric vehicles and life sciences.
“I am honored and humbled to follow in the footsteps of the many great technologists and engineers that have received this award,” said Om Nalamasu. “I truly believe that innovations in materials engineering are fundamental to enabling new discoveries and technology breakthroughs that can make the world a better place.”
Prior to joining Applied in 2006, Dr. Nalamasu was a NYSTAR Distinguished Professor of materials science and engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he also served as vice president of research. Earlier in his career, he held key research and development leadership positions at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Bell Laboratories/Lucent Technologies and Agere Systems, Inc., and was director of Bell Laboratories’ Nanofabrication Research Laboratory, MEMS and Waveguides Research, and Condensed Matter Physics organizations.
Dr. Nalamasu has received numerous awards, authored more than 180 papers, review articles and books, and holds more than 120 worldwide issued patents. In 2017, Dr. Nalamasu was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering for technical innovation spanning materials development, atomically controlled thin-film fabrication, and commercialization in microelectronics and energy generation and storage. He has received numerous national and global awards and is an IEEE Fellow, a member of the board of directors of The Tech Interactive in Silicon Valley and serves on several notable advisory boards. He received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
