Simon Karecki Fellowship Fund

The Education Alliance, a private foundation of Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), in conjunction with the SRC/SEMATECH Engineering Research Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing (Center), created the Simon Karecki Fellowship Fund in 2001 to honor the memory of Dr. Karecki and his outstanding contributions to the Center research as an SRC Graduate Fellow.

In 2022, the Education Alliance was closed. In preparation for this closure and with the agreement of the Karecki family, the endowment was transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Simon’s alma mater.

About Simon Karecki

Simon Karecki was born in Cracow, Poland on September 22, 1972, the only child of Richard and Anna Karecki. The Kareckis were determined that their son would have a good education. To this end, they immigrated to the United States where Simon graduated at the top of his class at Regis High School in New York City. He received the Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from Yale University in 1994, graduating magna cum laude with Distinction in the Major. He received both his Master of Science and Ph.D. Degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1997 and 2000, respectively. His list of honors and awards was quite long and included a Motorola/SRC Graduate Fellowship, and an SRC Inventor Recognition Award. At the time of his graduation from MIT, he had nearly forty publications and conference presentations to his credit. In September 2000, he joined IBM Corporation in Hopewell Junction, NY.

Simon was a compassionate and honorable young man, and his contributions to the semiconductor industry were significant even before he completed his doctoral studies. His research in developing novel environmentally benign chemistries for etching processes in semiconductor fabrication was well known within the Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing. His work on environmentally benign Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (RECVD) chamber cleaning made possible some of the cleaning chemistries and techniques widely used today by the semiconductor industry. Moreover, his research on environmentally benign plasma etching of silicon dioxide films provided some of the pioneering ideas the industry is exploring today. Perhaps his greatest contribution to the future success of the Center was his ability to build bridges among the semiconductor manufacturing companies, the supplier community and different research groups within the Center.

Past Awards