The historic French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana provided a festive backdrop for this year's CPMT Society Awards Luncheon on May 29, at the 53rd Annual Electronic Components Technology Conference (ECTC). Traditional Mardi Gras masks, beaded necklaces and zydeco music celebrated the traditions of the city and allowed the guests to have a little fun on their break from the technical sessions.

CPMT Society President, Rao R. Tummala praised the Society for giving "lagniappe." In New Orleans, lagniappe means "a little something extra," and is what the Society provides to the IEEE, to the industry, and especially to its members and participants. As he introduced the officers and guests at the head table, he took a moment to recognize each of them for their special contributions to the Society.

It was then time for the awards. Here is a list of the winners honored at this year's ECTC.

Dennis Olsen, consultant (USA), was presented this year's David Feldman Outstanding Contribution Award for his exceptional service to the CPMT Society and its conferences over the past 20 years. Formerly with Motorola, he earned recognition through a variety of distinguished awards, such as the Patent of the Year Award in 1993. Over the years, Dr. Olsen was issued five patents covering a broad spectrum of electronic packaging, ranging from a state-of-matter patent for lead-free solder alloy to a probe card for testing unencapsulated semiconductors for known good die applications. He continues to demonstrate exceptional service to the Society, the industry and its technology through active leadership in organizing conference programs, serving on numerous committees, and organizing and being elected as the 1st chair of the CPMT Society Phoenix, Ariz. Chapter. He is also a past president of the CPMT Society.

Thiam Beng Lim, deputy director at the Institute of Microelectronics in Singapore, won the Outstanding Sustained Technical Contribution Award for his leading-edge research in advanced packaging technologies and abilities to manage and transfer the electronic packaging research and development to the industry and other research organizations across the world. Dr. Lim has championed Singapore's influence in the electronics industry. His work and dedication have helped it evolve from a low-end high volume manufacturing industry to the development and manufacturing of leading-edge products competing with the best in the world. He is also a founding committee member of the prestigious IEEE CPMT Society's Electronics Packaging Technology Conference (EPTC) held in Singapore. Due to travel constraints this year, he was unable to attend the New Orleans ECTC award ceremony. However, the Society happily accepted the award on his behalf.

Mike McShane of Motorola (USA) and Paul Lin and Howard Wilson (formerly with Motorola) were awarded the Exceptional Technical Achievement Award for co-inventing the PBGA package that resulted in new and revolutionary applications for electronic packaging technologies. The PBGA package is now accepted worldwide as the preferred packaging technology for new products. . The PBGA package technology has also driven a new supporting infrastructure, such as assembly and test equipment. In 2001, Mr. McShane was recognized as the Microelectronic Packaging Technologist of the Year by Advanced Packaging Magazine and MEPTEC. Mr. McShane was most recently the General Chairman of the 2002 ECTC, and an active senior member of IEEE for 13 years. He is also a past member of the CPMT Society's Board of Governors.He accepted the award on behalf of the team.

Emmanouil (Manos) Tentzeris of the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA) was presented with the Outstanding Young Engineer Award for his contributions to RF circuit design of high performance IC devices and to IEEE and CPMT Society-sponsored conferences and activities. His numerous contributions include the development of the wavelet-based MultiResolution Time-Domain (MRTD) technique that allows for the system-level simulation of RF-Packaging structures with demonstrated significant savings in memory and execution time requirements on one and two order of magnitude, respectively with respect to the conventional full-wave simulation tools. MRDT was applied for the modeling and the evaluation of the most popular RF packaging structures, mainly of flip-chip, wirebonds and embedded passives, that led to the full-wave system-level analysis of packaged wireless multilayer modules for the first time ever. Prof. Tentzeris is a member of the CPMT Society, and a member of IEEE for over 13 years. He remains active in reviewing technical papers, organizing conferences and other volunteer-leader activities.

Paul Wesling, CPMT Vice President of Publications had the honor of announcing Jacobus D. van Wyk, Colin Kydd Campbell and Rengang Chen of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (USA), as winners of the 2002 Best Paper Award for their paper entitled "Experimental and Theoretical Characterization of an Antiferroelectric Ceramic Capacitor for Power Electronics." It was published in the June 2002 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Technologies. Unfortunately, the authors were unable to attend the conference. Dr. Z. Liang accepted on their behalf.

One student chapter was so impressive that The 2003 Chapter of the Year Award went to the CPMT Student Branch of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest (Romania), for its organization of outstanding programs for members through global collaboration and participation in technical conferences, student contests and local meetings. Paul Svasta, the chapter's advisor accepted the award on behalf of the student chapter leadership.

This year, there were four Special Presidential Recognition Awards presented. George Harman of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA, was honored for his dedicated service as a member of the CPMT Society Board of Governors, especially in the role of Fellows Committee Chair. Johan Liu of Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) was lauded for his dedicated service to the CPMT Society's conference activities; especially as founder of multiple meetings that include Adhesives in Electronics, PEP and HDP. And the CPMT Society Technical Committee on Electrical Design, Modeling and Simulation was recognized for organizing outstanding technical activities in the areas of electrical design, modeling ad simulation for the benefit of the CPMT Society, its members, the industry and the academic community. Madhavan Swaminathan, TC Chair from the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), was on hand to accept the award for the Committee.

Finally, Karl Puttlitz, IBM (USA), was recognized for his election to IEEE Fellow for his development and leadership in the microelectronic packaging sciences and area array interconnection technology.

"The winning individuals, teams and chapters represent excellence in the industry, and the CPMT Society cordially congratulates them on their achievements," said Rao Bonda, Chair of the CPMT Society Awards Program.

--submitted by Kristine Martin (Potomac Communication) and Rao Bonda (CPMT Awards Chair)