Haoyu Yang Receives Inaugural Nick Cobb Memorial Scholarship

The award honors the memory of the SPIE senior member and Mentor chief engineer

28 February 2019

2019 Nick Cobb Memorial Scholarship winner Haoyu Yang

HONOR AMONG LITHOGRAPHERS: Mentor Graphics' Steffen Schulze presents Haoyu Yang with the $10,000 check


BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA, and SAN JOSE, California - On 25 February, 2019, at the SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium in San Jose, California, Haoyu Yang was awarded the $10,000 Nick Cobb Memorial Scholarship by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and Mentor Graphics, a Siemens Business, for his potential contributions to the field related to advanced lithography.

This is the first year for the Nick Cobb scholarship, which is given to an exemplary graduate student working in the field of lithography for semiconductor manufacturing. The award honors the memory of Nick Cobb, who was an SPIE Senior Member and chief engineer at Mentor. His groundbreaking contributions enabled optical and process proximity correction for IC manufacturing.

Yang is currently pursuing his PhD degree in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include VLSI design for manufacturability (DFM) and machine learning. He received his Bachelor of Engineering from Tianjin University in 2015.

"Winning the Nick Cobb Memorial Scholarship means a recognition of my work on lithography by the leading community in that field," said Yang. "It's a tremendous honor - and a tremendous incentive as well. The award strongly motivates my continuing research on lithography and machine-learning solutions of various designs, as I investigate solutions to manufacturability challenges and problems. The award included travel support to the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, which itself has been an inspiring experience. The talks, presentations and networking that I enjoyed there will definitely guide my future research on DFM and lithography."

"We are excited about the presentation of our very first Nick Cobb Memorial Scholarship at this year's SPIE Advanced Lithography conference," said Mentor Vice President of Product Management Steffen Schulze. "This year marks the 20th anniversary since Mentor released its first OPC tool - Calibre OPCpro - that was built based on technology that Nick Cobb invented. The scholarship honors his fundamental work in the field of lithography and his many contributions as the chief architect of Mentor's Calibre OPC solutions. We are proud to continue his legacy of promoting innovation and engineering talent, and Haoyu Yang is the perfect candidate, with work focusing on applying machine-learning techniques in layout analysis, OPC and hotspot detection. Mentor appreciates the co-sponsorship by SPIE and the assistance in the selection process, and congratulates Haoyu on this exciting honor."

Mentor, a Siemens business, is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products, consulting services, and award-winning support for the world's most successful electronic, semiconductor, and systems companies.

About SPIE

SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, an educational not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-based science, engineering, and technology. The Society serves 257,000 constituents from 173 countries, offering conferences and their published proceedings, continuing education, books, journals, and the SPIE Digital Library. In 2018, SPIE provided more than $4 million in community support including scholarships and awards, outreach and advocacy programs, travel grants, public policy, and educational resources. www.spie.org.

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