Member Involvement

Currently the AREA Consortium is fortunate enough to have members from many different segments of the electronics industry and therefore consider our organization a window into the industry for emerging technologies. Many additional participating members provide our organization with materials and equipment to facilitate our research. If you wish to learn more about becoming a member of our organization please contact either Jim Wilcox (jim.wilcox@uic.com) or David Vicari (vicari@uic.com).

The Steering Committee consists of one representative from each of the market segments represented by the AREA Consortium. These market segments include; Military, EMS, Enterprise, Telecommunications, Equipment Suppliers, Industrial Electronics, Material Suppliers, Packaging Semiconductor, Research Institute.

The purpose of the Steering Committee is to provide feedback and guidance to the AREA Consortium Manager and to ensure the AREA Consortium research is meeting the needs of the industry and our members. AREA research projects are selected by the AREA Manager with the advice of the Steering Committee.

Our Steering Committee

Dan Blass - Lockheed Martin

Military Committee Member

Dan Blass is a Staff Research Scientist at Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training in Owego, NY. Active in product and process development, failure analysis, and trouble shooting. Experience with SMT, semiconductor assembly, and hybrid microelectronics and a variety of platforms ranging from satellites and avionics to maritime and ground based systems. Current research into processing and reliability of CuantumFuse™, a low temperature nanocopper replacement for solder interconnects. Prior to joining Lockheed Martin, Dan spent ten years as a researcher with Universal Instruments’ consortia. Dan has a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University.

Richard Coyle - Alcatel-Lucent

Telecommunications Committee Member

Richard Coyle has been with Alcatel-Lucent at the Bells Labs facility in Murray Hill, NJ since 2007. Previously, he worked at other Lucent Technologies and AT&T locations in New Jersey.

For the past 15 years he has been responsible for reliability and quality assessments of electronic assemblies. He also manages the work in the Bell Labs Interconnection Failure Analysis Lab where he utilizes his expertise in materials characterization and metallurgy to perform root cause analyses and support advanced reliability risk assessments. Most recently his work has focused on the reliability and metallurgical issues affecting the conversion to Pb-free manufacturing and he now is engaged actively in transitioning products to Pb free assembly. He is an active participant in many industry collaborative programs including those from iNEMI, HDPUG, and the Universal AREA consortia. One of the most prolific of those consortia programs is the iNEMI Alloy Alternatives project, which has made numerous presentations at SMTAI.

Richard has published a variety of papers related to assembly quality and reliability including work addressing the impact of solder voiding, surface finishes, mixed alloy soldering, reballing, component warpage and Head-in-Pillow Defects, compositional and microstructural effects in Pb-free alloys, and thermal aging. He continues to study alternative Pb-free solder formulations. He has published more than 50 technical papers related to electronic assembly and reliability and 25 on other technical subjects. He is the joint holder of 12 patents He is a graduate the University of Notre Dame. He is a member of SMTA, TMS, ASM International, the CPMT of IEEE, and AWS.

Tim Jensen - Indium

Material Supplier Committee Member

Tim Jensen is the product manager for Indium Corporation's PCB Assembly Materials, and is a Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA)-certified SMT process engineer. Tim has spent over 15 years working with customers to troubleshoot and optimize SMT process lines, and solving issues such as;Head-in-pillow, Graping and QFN voiding. Having worked directly on hundreds of surface mount lines, and developing thousands of different products, Tim understands each customer's unique requirements. Using that direct knowledge and expertise, he works closely with Indium's technical service, sales, and research and development teams to develop cutting edge products that address the unique challenges faced by the electronics assembly industry.Tim has a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Clarkson University, and is a member of the SMTA.

Jeff Kennedy - Celectica

EMS Committee Member

Engage Lead & Director of Technology Industrial, Aerospace, Defense (IAD)

Jeff directs Celestica’s advanced technology strategy and development initiatives, including the design and implementation of technology roadmaps for the IAD sector. This includes working with each of the company’s supply sites on process developments for identification and implementation of advanced technologies to support customer products ahead of market requirements. Jeff also engages with customers to develop solutions involving Engineering Services that provide value and return on engineering in the areas of Product Development, Assembly Services, Lab Analysis, and Test Development.

Jeff has more than 30 years experience in system integration, process development, PWB fabrication, and packaging in the microelectronics industry. He has engineering and management experience working within mainframe computer industry, microcircuit wire bonding and flip chip, PWB fabrication and laminate packaging substrates, and the last 14 years in contract electronics assembly. Jeff is on the SMTA Board of Directors and is an active member of both IPC & IMAPS.

Jeff is the project engineer lead for two SERDP-funded Tin Whisker Research projects jointly executed with BAE Systems. In this role he provides project planning, process consultation, design concepts, white paper and presentations development, as well as coordination and guidance for the project assembly activities. Jeff also is project engineer for a European research project which is jointly executed with Thales.

Jeff Schake - DEK

Equipment Supplier Committee Member

Jeff Schake is Senior Advanced Technology Specialist at DEK USA with 14 years of service in their Future Technologies Group. He is permanently installed at the Advanced Process Laboratory at Universal Instruments Corporation in Conklin, NY leveraging their world class assembly, test, and measurement capabilities to lead future focused classified printing research and customer support projects. Jeff engages in development activities directed to ensure that printing equipment capability and process knowledge are aligned with meeting next generation electronic assembly requirements. Wafer bumping, wafer applied coatings, encapsulation, miniature passive component, and 0.3mm pitch CSP assembly are several areas Jeff has improved our industry’s printing education, having presented at over 15 conferences and publishing more than 25 technical papers. Jeff is a regular contributor to Universal’s AREA Consortium industry research program and IPC Stencil Design Guidelines Standards Committee, as well as serving on the IPC APEX Technical Program Committee and supporting numerous SMTA sponsored events. He holds Bachelor’s degrees in Physics and Mechanical Engineering along with a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Binghamton University.

Isabel de Sousa - IBM

Enterprise Committee Member

Isabel de Sousa received her Engineering degree in Physics and M.Sc,A in Metallurgy at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal Isabel has accumulated 24 years of experience within IBM at the IBM Canada Bromont Manufacturing plant Initially , she has spent several years performing failure analysis afterwards, steered towards process engineering : a milestone project involved the implementation of high volume production of CCGA . Was named advisory engineer in 2002 and worked at the implementation of CGA and BGA leadfree solutions. More recently the advisory mandate has broadened to bond and assembly processes and more specifically to underfill and thermal interface manufacturing.