Seminar Title: MEMS Technology and Market in Mobile Device Applications

Distinguished Speaker: Tom Chang, President, CTI Consulting

Time: October 15, 2009 (Thursday), 7:00PM-9:00PM

Location: Western Digital (recording media operation site)
Pacific conference room
1710 Automation Pkwy
San Jose , CA 95131
-- please reply to this email if you plan to come, we need headcount for preparing food
--- free admission with limited food and drink
-- $5 donation is welcomed to cover the cost and support our non-profit organization
Seminar Abstract:
MEMS Technology and Market in Mobile Device Applications MEMS (Micro-electro-Mechanical Systems) technologies are getting lots of attention in the mobile device industry. Smart phones now have accelerometer to sense the phone・s orientation for landscape or portrait display; proximity sensor to detect the phone is being held next to the user・s ear and the screen light is turned off to save battery power. MEMS Gyros are used to detect the vibration of the camera. Pressure sensor, magnetometer, gyro and accelerometer are part of the GPS module for location sensing. Most of the cell phone microphones are made of MEMS technology. Pressure sensors are being adopted in the hard disk drives for notebook computers to detect the altitude. Free Fall sensors have been in the Notebook PC and disk drives to sensor the fall and park the magnetic head before the drive hit the hard surface. A number of other sensors are being considered in the hard disk drive to help the control the head-media spacing.
MEMS technology enables mechanical sensors to be made out of Silicon wafer processes and easily integrate with CMOS for signal conditioning. The size of the MEMS system market is reaching $8.8 billions by 2012, according to Yole・s research. Computer and internet had created the last two high-tech revolution. Will the next one be created by the pervasiveness of HMI (Human-machine interface) technologies?
About Distinguished Speaker: Tom Chang
Tom Chang is President of CTI Consulting, a marketing firm specialized in MEMS and sensor technologies. CTI is the North America representative of APM, a leading MEMS foundry based in Hsinchu Taiwan and UniSense, a leading sensor company, targeting disk drive applications. CTI successfully developed numerous business cases in the MEMS market. In the past 5 years, Tom also has organized several MEMS conferences and forums both in Taiwan and Silicon Valley, as well as being a member of organizing committee for the largest MEMS conference in the world--Transducer, 09 and 11. Tom spoke at SensorExpo, 09 on the commercialization of MEMS technology.
Tom is a veteran in disk drive industry. Tom was Vice President, Engineering of Dastek, a thin-film head start-up that was successfully acquired by Komag in 1992 (now Western Digital Recording Media Operation). From 1997 to 2002, Tom was also a Senior Director at Read-Rite (now Western Digital Recording Head Operation) in charge of Wafer Fab Engineering. On his watch, the fab completed a major wafer size transition and development of several generations of new GMR head products. Tom・s system development experiences include a Senior Engineering Manager at Samsung Information Technology and another start-up with Finis Conner--StorCard. Tom was CAISS president in 2001.
Tom holds MS, ChE from UC Davis and BS from National Tsing-Hua University of Taiwan. Tom is a Stanford Business School Graduate through Stanford Executive Program. In community service, Tom is the current Vice President of Taiwanese American Industrial Technology Association and past President of Taiwanese American Engineers・ Association-North America Headquarters.