Dr. John H. Givens has focused his career on business development through the innovation and development of materials and processes necessary to enable IC fabrication. His industrial experience includes Global Product Manager for Applied Materials with focus on 150mm and 200mm CMP. Director – Wafer Products for Skorpios Technologies which he developed aerospace, life science, and industrial applications and business pipelines. Director – Wafer Services Business Development at Novati Technologies for telecom and semiconductor international sales. Vice President of Engineering for Thomas West, Inc. with a focus on CMP pad material development and process implementation. CMP Section Manager for VLSI Technology with the responsibilities of CMP manufacturability and process strategy. In addition to providing technology necessary for the manufacturing of ASIC's at VLSI, Dr. Givens has developed advanced multilevel interconnects for the production of high-density DRAM's at Micron Technology, Boise, ID and advanced microprocessors at IBM in Burlington, VT. He is President of Innovative Materials Group, Inc. and CMP Solutions, Ltd. which he founded in 1999 and 2002, respectively, to provide consulting services. Dr. Givens has authored 11 peer reviewed publications and holds 53 patents concerning advanced semiconductor methodologies. He is a member of engineering technical societies TMS, ASM, AcerS, ECS, MRS, ASME and IEEE. Dr. Givens is an active member of AVS for which he is the instructor for both the CMP Short Course and Cu Interconnect Short Course. And, he is an editor for peer reviewed technical journals JVSTB and Thin Solid Films. Dr. Givens received his B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering, MS in Metallurgical Engineering and Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign