Ryan Thompson Email & Phone Number

Santa Rosa, CA

• Process engineer supporting development, optimization, and manufacturing of state-of-the-art optical-interference filters for aerospace (government and commercial), consumer electronics, and automotive (eg LIDAR).
• Qualified and commissioned custom capital equipment to create new factory capabilities based upon customer requests; developed and optimized processes using Six-Sigma and LEAN philosophies.
• Deployed to international customer location on long-term assignment (6 months) to develop novel processing capability; led production teams on extended assignment. Transferred technology and equipment to domestic.
• Developed new predictive quality tools using VBA (Excel) and SQL to data-mine, correlate, and develop product trends for process steering improvements.
• Partnered with marketing to investigate consumer electronics and automotive markets for product development opportunities.

Santa Rosa, CA

• Partnered with prospective and current customers to develop software and interfaces with embedded SENtral Sensor Fusion co-processor running AHRS, indoor-location, and activity tracking algorithms.
• Provided technical demonstrations, customer support, built custom code and applications, and troubleshooting for UAV, mobile, and wearable applications.
• Travelled to domestic and international customers for application and sales support.

Santa Rosa, CA

• Engineer tasked with start-up of new factory for high-volume manufacture of magnetic sensors for Nintendo WiiU: 6 machines @ 8k units/day (1.6M units/month); developed and optimized processes using SPC, DOE, Six-Sigma.
• Guided ramp-up to HVM numbers within 6 weeks, beating plan by over 2 months; optimized processes and established best practices; developed training materials for operators, technicians, and support staff.
• Utilized significant troubleshooting skills to rectify line-down situations, despite PLCs being coded in Japanese, and GUIs in English (I don’t speak/read Japanese).
• Presented key learnings and recommendations to Senior Executive Management team upon request during potential show-stopping moments.

Santa Rosa, CA

• Optimized chemical vapor deposition (CVD) optical coating system resulting in up to 500% yield increase, 50% decrease in cycle time, and up to 300% increase in reactor uptime/product throughput.
• Acted as technical product manager to reduce total number of unique products from over 30 to fewer than 12 while maintaining technical capability of product portfolio.
• Managed projects including proposal writing, budget creation, and equipment scheduling.
• Developed optical anti-reflection (AR) and bandpass filters for UV, visible, and infrared applications.
• Regularly acted as technical sales engineer during development meetings with existing and new customers.
• Instituted data gathering and analysis of machine uptime to determine, and then improve mean time between failure (MTBF), and optimize preventive maintenance (PM).

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

• Opened new downtown location; hired and trained new staff, ordered capital equipment, established supplier contacts and set customer-service standards.
• Hired, trained, and retained new team; fostered a culture of excellence with respect to food quality, communications, service and hospitality. Restaurant was profitable in less than 3 months.
• Leveraged process engineering principles expertise in kitchen operations to augment business experience: average daily volume 400 pizzas (600+ in summer months), peak: 100/hour at 90 seconds in 800F ovens; Friday-night.
• Responsible for day-to-day operations, product and service quality, training, culture, maintenance, and continuous improvement at one of the top 15 restaurants in the Twin Cities, MN market.
• Prepared and reviewed quarterly and annual reports and P&L statements.
• Transferred back to flagship location to restore, reorganize, and re-energize culture to first-class standards of food and service quality.

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

• Conducted research on silicon- and nitride-based nanomaterials, crystal defect and characterization of III-V semiconductors, oxides and nitrides (In/Ga/Al compounds) used in LED applications and photovoltaic.
• Built ultra-high vacuum (UHV) systems for molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) and pulsed-laser deposition (PLD); integrated hardware and software control systems using LabVIew.
• Two-time visitor to National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM)

San Diego, California, United States

Developed and executed comprehensive testing of next-generation optical, electrical, and mechanical subsystems for spectrally-narrowed excimer and molecular gas lasers used in semiconductor lithography systems.

San Diego, California, United States

• Key member of the capital equipment engineering team responsible for fluidics, and pneumatic systems; learned mechanical, and electrical systems in Intel’s next generation burn-in and test technology.
• Built custom HMI/GUI environment using LabVIEW and GE PLC software.
• Leveraged sub- and whole-system knowledge to support equipment installation at domestic and international customer sites.
• Engineering lead during installation and customer support at domestic and international production locations.
• Liaison for engineering, manufacturing, field service, and customer teams.

San Diego, California, United States

• Optimized and supported semiconductor fabrication processes including lithography, chemical-vapor deposition (CVD), wire-bonding, solder reflow, encapsulation, and underfill using DOE and SPC methods.
• Managed failure analysis lab: coordinated sample preparation, experiments, investigations, and analyses.
• Conducted semiconductor characterization including SEM w/ EDS, logic/circuit analysis, electrical testing, oscilloscopes, and rework.

Ph.D. (Abd), Materials Science

B.S; B.S, Materials Science; Chemical Engineering