MS Physics, University of Arkansas, 1977.

Integrated Circuit Processing, Texas Instruments, 1977-1998

Engineering Manager, Texas Instruments, 1991-1998

Professor and Director of the microEP Graduate Program, University of Arkansas, 1998-to date

Professor Vickers joined the University of Arkansas in 1998. After completing his MS degree in Physics in 1977, he was employed by Texas Instruments in integrated circuit process and equipment engineering. During these twenty-plus years of employment, he worked a year in Freising, Germany; chaired worldwide factory teams on various initiatives; and spent the last seven years as engineering manager for the highest volume Integrated Circuit fabrication factory in the world, located in Sherman, Texas.

INTERDISCIPLINARY ADVANCED MATERIALS AND DEVICES

After completing the requirements for a MS in Physics from the University of Arkansas in 1977, I worked for Texas Instruments for over twenty years in integrated circuit process and equipment engineering. During those twenty years I worked for a year in Freising, Germany; chaired world wide factory teams on various improvement initiatives; and spent the last seven years as the engineering manager for the highest volume IC fabrication factory in TI in Sherman, Texas. In the course of performing these multiple tasks it became apparent to me that the traditional educational paths in science and engineering did not provide the optimal educational background for a person working in careers involving advanced micro/nano materials and devices.

I moved from industry to the University of Arkansas in April of 1998 as a Research Professor in Physics because I was offered the opportunity to create a fully interdisciplinary educational program to prepare students to work in this realm of micro/nano materials and devices. This startup efforts financial support was provided through a NSF/ASTA grant to Dr. Greg Salamo to create an educational infrastructure in pursuit of ultra-fast electronics. The interdisciplinary program I envisioned included the science, engineering, management, and business aspects of high tech academics and industry. MicroEP would give our students the rigorous research-based,graduate program with career-specific curriculum and training that I would have valued as a hiring manager.

This vision was shared by many faculty at the University, and resulted in the MS Microelectronics-Photonics (microEP) being approved in 1999 and the PhD microEP degree being approved in 2000. The microEP degree program operates as a virtual department reporting directly to the Graduate School, with a faculty that spans multiple engineering and science departments from both the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering. The program is very flexible in accepting applicants with a wide range of rigorous science or engineering BS and MS degrees, and about half of the microEP students have joined research groups in departments different from the department of their own prior traditional degree.

All students in the microEP degree program follow a matrix reporting structure that is unusual in the University environment but common in the industrial environment. Each student has a traditional relationship with their research professor and that research group. But all students that enter the microEP program in a given academic year also are part of that yearÕs cohort, a pseudo-industry technologist group that is trained in the management techniques and soft skills that will make its members highly effective in their early careers after graduation.

The microEP program has had over 100 graduate students enter the program and has graduated forty MS students (many continuing toward a PhD) and sixteen PhD students. These graduates are working in technical industry associated with the program research and educational thrusts, as the owners of their own startups commercializing their own research, in academic positions at both the faculty and post doc levels, and in various other jobs in education and technology.