Directors
Prof Ladouceur’s scientific contribution over the past thirty years covers a wide area of photonics technologies: from telecommunications, to sensing; from fabrication to simulation. Prof Ladouceur has lead large scale projects targeting the development of novel hybrid opto-electronics devices from their early design phase to their commercial realisation. In the process, Prof Ladouceur has gained considerable expertise in modelling, design, material sciences, packaging and interfacing.
An important part of Prof Ladouceur’s career has also been dedicated to the translation of technologies from their research environments. As the founding Managing Director (2000), he designed the original 5 years business plan establishing the Bandwidth Foundry as the prime photonics mask making and chip design centre in Australia. Subsequently (2006), Prof Ladouceur helped raise €5 million from private investors to establish Silanna Pty Ltd and more recently (2016), he also raised funds from both Melbourne Angels and Hunter Angels for the development of liquid crystal-based transducer technologies within Zedelef Pty Ltd.
Associate Professor Niels Quack is currently serving as Academic Director of the Research and Prototype Foundry at the University of Sydney. He received the M.Sc. degree from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in 2005, and the Dr.Sc. degree from Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH), Switzerland, in 2010.
From 2011 to 2015, he was Postdoctoral Researcher and Visiting Scholar with the Integrated Photonics Laboratory, Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. From 2014 to 2015, he was Senior MEMS Engineer with Sercalo Microtechnology, Neuchâtel, Switzerland. From 2015 to 2021, he was SNSF Assistant Professor at EPFL and in 2022 he joined The University of Sydney, Australia, as Associate Professor in Micro- and Nanosystems.
He is a Steering Committee Member of the IEEE International Conference on Optical MEMS and Nanophotonics (OMN) and served as General Chair of the IEEE OMN 2018 and the Latsis Symposium 2019 on Diamond Photonics. He has served as Committee Member for the most prestigious conferences in the field, including ECOC, MEMS, CLEO, SPIE OPTO, Transducers or MNE. He serves as Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (JMEMS) and for the SPIE Journal of Optical Microsystems (JOM)
Professor Sergio Leon-Saval
Academic Deputy Director FBG Facility
Sergio is Academic Deputy Director of the Advanced FBG Facility. He is the Director of the Sydney Astrophotonics Instrumentation Laboratory and his background is in the field of specialty optical fibres, astrophotonics and optical instrumentation systems.
Management
As the NSW Node’s Facility Business Manager, Matt is responsible for strategic development and high level operational control in line with University and government priorities and research goals. He was appointed to this role in 2017 after many years of international experience is research and research/facility management.
Dr Matt Boreland has over twenty-five years’ experience in the field of photovoltaics, renewables and semiconductors, predominantly at the industry-research interface, with international experience in Australia (UNSW, Sydney University), Japan (Toyota Technological Institute), the UK (Loughborough University) and Singapore (UNSWASIA, NUS). He received his BSc(hons) in Physics and his PhD in photovoltaics (PV) at UNSW. To date he has been directly involved in attaining in excess of AUD 30 million of industrial and public funding for photovoltaic research in the UK, Singapore and Australia. In addition to research expertise, he has a diversity of experience in engineering, management and academic roles up to Director and Associate Professor levels. Following his PhD he was a JSPS Postdoctoral at the Toyota Technological Institute in Japan. He then joined the Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology (CREST) as an academic at Loughborough University in 2002 where he led R&D and teaching programs in PV, subsequently taking a joint-appointment at Sydney University in 2004 to also lead their industrial solar thermal R&D. In 2008 he was a founding member of the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) as the Deputy Director (later Director) of the Silicon Cluster and Head of Production Technologies, where he established SERIS’ $15M pilot line for Si PV R&D and leading industrial R&D programs in silicon photovoltaics. Dr Boreland returned to UNSW in 2013 to the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering as Associate Professor. In 2017 he accepted the role as Business Facility Manager at the NSW Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) located at UNSW.
Nelson has more than 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry before joining ANFF-NSW University of Sydney. He has an aptitude for leading groups of technical workforce providing equipment and process engineering support within high-volume fast-paced manufacturing and research environment.
Gordon leads the ANFF-NSW technical team who work to keep the ANFF-NSW laboratories and tooling up and running. He liaises closely with the Facility Manager, Process Engineering team, UNSW Facilities, commercial suppliers and other stakeholders to ensure the ANFF-NSW cleanrooms, tooling and supplies are always on hand to meet the demands of the ANFF-NSW research community.
Coming from an industrial design background, Gordon built up extensive experience in cleanroom design and operation prior to taking on the role of Laboratory Manager of the Semiconductor Nanofabrication Facility (from which the ANFF-NSW laboratories developed) in 2006. He has been instrumental in the specification, design and setup of ANFF’s newer laboratories and the upkeep and improvement of the pre-existing facility.
Fay Hudson divides her time between the roles of Process Manager with ANFF and Senior Research Fellow in Prof. Dzurak’s research program. Having been a member of Prof. Dzurak’s research team at UNSW since 2001, her expertise is in micro- and nano-fabrication of nanoelectronic devices and silicon qubits, such as electron beam and photo lithography, high quality oxidation processes, wafer doping as well as a number of deposition, etching and metrology techniques. In 2011, she joined ANFF as Process Manager.
Andrew is the Facility Projects Manger at ANFF-NSW. He is former Senior Process Engineer, and his areas of expertise include UV photolithography and electron beam lithography. As an joint area supervisor, he is responsible for the operations in the lower east cleanroom facility.
In addition to process development, Andrew also actively participates in a number of research projects that involve device design, fabrication, as well as low temperature electrical characterizations.
Andrew received his PhD in Experimental Semiconductor Physics from UNSW with educational backgrounds in research commercialization, optoelectronics, and computer science. Prior to joining ANFF in 2015, he has worked as a Research Fellow in the School of Physics at UNSW where he investigated dopant-less GaAs nanoelectonics, as well as amorphous silicon spintronic devices.
Alison Robertson
Operations Manager
Alison is the Operations Manager at the ANFF-NSW University of Sydney site. She has significant operations and project management experience gained across research, medical and financial institutions. She has a proven track record transforming work models to enhance efficiencies and improve outcomes for organisations and groups.
Lim Wu Sim
External Engagement Manager
Lim brings over a decade of experience in Australia’s semiconductor industry, encompassing diverse projects in academia and industry. His expertise lies in end-to-end device fabrication, process development, and integration. He is committed to utilising his background to drive strategic innovation and foster impactful partnerships within the industry. He will be engaging with university, industry, and government partners in the semiconductor sector to identify and develop significant opportunities aligned with the S3B and ANFF strategy.
Operations Team
Anna provides executive support to the ANFF-NSW Node Director and administrative support to the ANFF-NSW team. Anna ensures the efficient management of the ANFF-NSW office functions.
Anna has extensive secretarial and office management experience gained from working in the banking and finance industries prior to joining ANFF in 2017.
Nora provides senior administrative and office management support to the Operations Manager and Facility Business Manager on research and strategic activities including reporting and procurement. Nora oversees the management of the ANFF user billing process providing advice and troubleshooting.
Nora joined the ANFF-NSW team in 2013 and brings extensive office management and executive secretarial experience gained from working in both the private and tertiary sectors.
Dolores Dunn
Senior Administration Officer
Dolores is the Senior Administration Officer for the ANFF-NSW University of Sydney site and is responsible for purchasing, event management, and general administration.
Karen is the ANFF-NSW Operations Manager, leading the operations team who contribute to the overall management and coordination of the business functions of the ANFF-NSW Node.
Karen joined ANFF-NSW in 2009, following nine years working in CQC2T. Karen has worked with Professor Andrew Dzurak across both research facilities since 2000.
Karen has extensive experience within UNSW, spanning across 32 years, bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience working across different work structures and disciplines within UNSW. Karen’s management expertise encompasses financial, human resources and project management. Karen received her Diploma of Human Resources Management in 1996.
Lucy is the ANFF-NSW Senior Finance Officer, responsible for the financial management functions of the ANFF-NSW Node. Lucy joined ANFF-NSW in 2018. She came to UNSW from the private sector where she worked extensively in internal auditing and risk management roles. Lucy is a UNSW Business School alumni and Chartered Accountant.
Process Engineering Team
Roger Ackroyd
Senior Process Engineer: Thin Film Deposition
Roger is a Senior Process Engineer: Thin Film Deposition at ANFF-NSW University of Sydney. He spent the last four years working as a nanofabrication process engineer for Microsoft Quantum. In this role, and prior to this at UNSW, he worked on several devices and materials systems, including superconductors, semiconductors, qubits, microwave resonators, Josephson junctions, and SQUIDs. His focus is on process development, process improvement, and scale-up.
Justin Digweed
Technical Officer: Fibre Fabrication
Justin manages the polymer fibre facility and the prototyping lab at ANFF-NSW University of Sydney. He has expertise in fibre fabrication and all aspects of technical support.
Lars Goran Edvell
Senior Process Engineer: Advanced FBG Facility
Goran Edvell has 20+ years of experience in the photonics industry with special interest in R&D, design, and manufacturing of application specific Fibre Bragg Gratings. Goran has a MSc in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering from Linkoping University, Sweden.
Josiah is a process engineer with a special interest in microfabrication of biomedical devices utilising deep plasma etch processes (DRIE), plasma deposition (sputtering, PECVD) and metallization techniques including PVD and electroplating. He started his time at UNSW with an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering (photonics) followed by a PhD fabricating a prototype device to investigate the use of liquid crystal-based sensor technology for use as a brain—machine—interface. He has worked in various capacities at ANFF-NSW since 2015 transitioning to the role of process engineer in 2017. His role includes a wide array of tool and process training, especially around photolithography, metal and oxide deposition and ITO. Other areas of interest include ellipsometry and more recently ion-implantation. Still actively involved in biomedical device fabrication research, he spreads his time between training lab-users, running client processes and assisting the technical team.
Dr Jason Hwang
Senior Process Engineer: Quantum Technologies
Jason has expertise in nanofabrication of quantum electronic devices, particularly in electron beam lithography, metal deposition, and liftoff. He completed a PhD at UNSW where he focused on building silicon CMOS quantum devices for spin-based quantum computing. As Senior Process Engineer: Quantum Technologies at ANFF-NSW University of Sydney, he is responsible for various tools and processes including electron beam lithography, SEM, ellipsometer, ALD, evaporator, sputterer, HF wet etch, wire bonding and die bonding.
Ethel Ilagan
Process Engineer: Optical Lithography
Ethel has extensive experience in photolithography, as well expertise in wet processing and microfluidic fabrication. As Process Engineer: Optical Lithography at ANFF-NSW University of Sydney, she is responsible for the photolithography tools.
Dr Liguo Luo
Senior Process Engineer: Advanced FBG Facility
Liguo has more than 20 years’ R&D, engineering, and production experience in photonics. His expertise is in photonics devices including fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs), planar lightwave circuits, and fibre lasers. He worked extensively on engineering processes for high performance and high quality FBG devices. As a senior process engineer, he is responsible for setting up and running the processes at the Advanced FBG Facility. Liguo received his PhD in Optics from Shandong University.
Lawrence Farrar
Process Engineer: Metrology and Characterisation
Lawrence is a process engineer specialising in metrology and characterisation. He is an experienced electron microscopist and has expertise in a variety of equipment and techniques from his PhD research at RMIT University. Lawrence’s focus is on characterisation utilising the suite of metrology equipment in the RPF.
Pierrette Michaux is a Process Engineer specialising in Nanofabrication. Pierrette completed an Advanced Diploma in Chemistry in 2002, then in 2005 a Master degree in Materials Science at the Engineering College of Industrial Ceramics in France. Pierrette started her career in the Science of Ceramic Processes and Surface Treatment Laboratory, a division of the French governmental research organization. As a research engineer, she pursued applied research activities in the field of renewable energies, and specifically in emerging processes for Hydrogen production. She developed her area of competences in nanometer sized powders synthesis and nanostructured deposits elaboration. She has experience in many manufacturing processes for oxide based materials and is proficient with numerous physico-chemical characterization techniques. In 2011 Pierrette joined the Victoria-Suntech Advanced Solar Facility at Swinburne University as a Laboratory Technician. In this role, Pierrette co-ordinated operation of various nanofabrication equipment (including electron-beam lithography, ion-beam lithography, PECVD and sputter systems) and was responsible for development of a variety of processes including specialised PDMS processing for a variety of applications. Pierrette joined the ANFF-NSW team in 2014 as a Process Engineer.
Steve Moody
Senior Technical Officer: Characterisation
Steve’s expertise is in characterisation, having come to us from a role with Microscopy Australia. As Senior Technical Officer: Characterisation at ANFF-NSW University of Sydney, he is particularly focused ion beam (cross-sectioning, manipulation, lift-out) and multi-beam nanofabrication.
Jayanthi Ramiah
Process Engineer: Wet Process
Jay holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Sydney and has a robust background in both Semiconductor and Quantum device fabrication. She brings valuable experience from A-STAR (Singapore) and more recently, from UNSW’s Silicon Quantum Computing.
Dr Gloria Qiu
Senior Process Engineer
Gloria received her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Houston, USA. Her expertise is in magnetic thin film deposition and nanostructure patterning for bit-patterned media application. She has also worked extensively on magnetic biosensors. As Senior Process Engineer at ANFF-NSW University of Sydney, Gloria is responsible for the deposition and dry etching tools.
Joanna Szymanska is the process engineer responsible for technical management of semiconductor processing within ANFF Facility. Responsible for provision of training, and new microfabrication process development. As area supervisor she’s also responsible for operation and maintenance of upper east and west part of the ANFF Facility.
Her area of expertise is EBL -Raith 150TWO system, UV photolithography, RIE, ICP RIE, thin film deposition which include thermal and E-Beam evaporation, sputtering, PECVD, ALD, and thermal oxidation. She also has experience in device characterisation by profilometry, AFM, elipsometry, and probe measurements.
She gained her experience from working at CSIRO (13 years) at Marsfield cleanroom Facility mainly on fabrication and characterisation of GaAs devices, and also from the Technical University in Wroclaw in Poland (7 years) on II-V group materials.
She received her Bsc and Master degree in electronics from Technical University in Wroclaw, Poland in 1978.
Ute Schubert ( Env. & Chem Eng. Fachschule für Technik, Germany) is a process engineer at ANFF-NSW. She is responsible for provision of training and process development for microfabrication process. Ute also has responsibilities handling the administrative aspects of ANFF-NSW safety processes. She has over 20 years’ experience in process engineering previously working in the Si and GaAs photovoltaics sectors at CSG Solar Australia, Suntech Australia, Fraunhofer ISE Germany. Ute joined ANFF in 2014.
Technical Team
Mark Gross is a Senior Technical Officer. He has worked for more than 35 years in the areas of plasma physics, thin film processing and semiconductor process engineering. He currently provides a range of skills including equipment maintenance and operation, optical characterization, plasma processing and tool design and modification.
Mark received a PhD in experimental physics from the University of Sydney in 1985. He initially worked as a research scientist in plasma processing at the Microelectronics Research Centre in Electrical Engineering at UNSW, which later became the Semiconductor Nanofabrication Facility, the precursor to ANFF. He was also an experimental scientist at the CSIRO Division of Materials Science where he worked on optical thin film coating technologies. He joined ANFF in 2015.
Aung Gyi
Senior Technical Officer
Aung Gyi is working as Senior Technical Officer, assist in maintaining laboratory process tools and plant in good operating order (including component level electronics repairs); ensuring that hazardous gas storage and delivery system is maintained in good order and his responsibilities span all electrical engineering disciplines but will primarily be in the areas related to electro/mechanical control systems for process tools and infrastructure used for micro/nanofabrication of electronics, MEMs, optical and quantum computing devices.
He has more than a decade experience in semiconductor industry. Previously he was working for Silanna Semiconductor Australia as Senior Equipment Engineer for Photolithography, CVD and Hitachi CDSEM since 2015. Prior to joining Silanna he was working for ASML Singapore as Customer Support engineer responsible for installation, relocation and troubleshooting of PAS5500 Scanner, Stepper and YieldStar. Before joining ASML Singapore, he was working for STM Singapore Pte Ltd as Assistant Maintenance Engineer for DCVD thin film department, rendering equipment engineering support for process and manufacturing team. He started his career working for Hewlett-Packard Singapore in 2003 as Technical Specialist supporting high volume 24/7 Inkjet printer cartridge manufacturing facility.
As for education, he attained Degree in Engineering Business Management from University of Coventry and Diploma in Electronics, Computer and Communication Engineering from Singapore Polytechnics.
Gopakumar Gopi is a Senior Technical Officer responsible for equipment and plant maintenance at UNSW. Prior to joining ANFF, he has worked as a maintenance technician in STM Singapore. His other professional experience includes working as a network engineer at Broadspectrum on NBN project, as a maintenance professional at Halliburton Australia in the oil and gas industry, and as an Electro/ Mechanical Technician Lead at Halliburton Singapore.
Gopakumar received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from University of Sunderland and has a Diploma in Electronics and Communication Engineering.
Selvaraj Nagarajan
Senior Equipment Engineer
Selvaraj (Raj) has significant equipment maintenance and installation experience gained across semiconductor research and manufacturing industries. He has a proven track record of providing equipment and process engineering support to enhance best outcomes for organisations and groups. Recent roles at Microsoft Quantum involved contributing to and managing the day-to-day Microsoft cleanroom equipment operations and improvements projects.
Saw Saw Nyi Nyi Latt
Cleanroom Equipment Officer
Saw is a Cleanroom Equipment Officer responsible for process tools and equipment maintenance at ANFF-NSW University of Sydney. He worked at A*STAR, Singapore’s leading research facility for more than 7 years supporting the installation and maintenance of SPTS’s DRIE and PECVD tools.
