I am a professional chemical engineer located in Kansas City. I focused on water and wastewater treatment design for the first 15 years of my career before transitioning into engineering and project management where I have mainly managed large water and wastewater projects for 10 years.

Kiewit

Senior Process Chemical Engineer with 30+ years of experience working in Facilities Operation Engineering and Design within the semiconductor manufacturing industry. He is a Subject Matter Expert in chemicals, chemical systems, and application for semiconductor manufacturing, pollution abatement, water and wastewater treatment and supporting HazWaste systems and operation.

Micron

Dr. Sriram (Ram) Ramamoorthy is a Supply Chain R&D Engineer/Technologist in Intel’s Fab Materials Organization managing specialty chemicals and filtration. Prior to this role, Ram was a senior process technology development engineer in Intel R&D fab in Oregon developing front end wet etch processes. Ram is an active member in IRDS and SEMI task forces and standards team. Ram received his Ph.D in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY).

Intel

Latif joined Intel in 2005 as Microcontamination Engineer for the startup of 45nm process at Fab-32 in Arizona. He has been involved in four more process transfers to Arizona, including the latest 10nm startup. He is technical expert in Microcontamination, including AMC’s, with over 25 years of experience in environmental, semiconductor testing, AMC’s and other Microcontamination problem solving. Prior to joining Intel, Latif worked as a Research Scientist at Balazs Analytical and as a Technical Support Manager at ChemTrace. Latif has participated in collaborative efforts with many chemical and equipment manufacturing companies and organizations including, Sematech, Factory Mutual Research Corporation, in development of criteria for approval of materials suitable for use in semiconductor fabs.

Bernie Zerfas is a former facilities engineer at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. He has more than 30 years’ experience in the semiconductor industry with a primary focus on UPW and deionized water systems. Although his initial formal training was in chemistry and chemical engineering, he has had a wide variety of formal and informal educational experiences in a variety of technical disciplines. Mr. Zerfas is also an active member of the UPW sub-group of the ITRS; a recent area of focus has been organic and particulate contamination. His current other areas of responsibility include a spectrum of pollution control systems.

Dave Buesser is the COO of FTD Solutions. He is a mechanical engineer from the University of Arizona, and he has spent his entire 27-year career driving advanced technology facilities forward. He began with a focus on semiconductor process piping design and proceeded to build likely the deepest experience in the industry on UPW distribution systems. He has led the design efforts for several UPW plants for greenfield semiconductor facilities and has also led many multi-discipline design teams on microelectronics facilities. Today, his focus is to bring world-class expertise coupled with unique tools to help solve the most pressing UPW and facilities challenges facing advanced industries.

FTD Solutions

Victor Smith is an industrial research analyst at Global Water Intelligence. Since joining GWI in 2024 he has conducted research on the market for water treatment chemicals and the chemical manufacturing industry. He is now looking at water-related opportunities and spending in data centres. Victor holds a BA in History and Economics and an MA in History from the University of Manchester.

With a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and graduate coursework in Optical and Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Colorado, Steve brings over three decades of experience developing and applying advanced particle monitoring and contamination control technologies across semiconductor, aerospace, and defense sectors.


 (Random Hill Publishers, 2005), authoring Chapter 42: 

Particle Monitoring in Semiconductor Manufacturing

 (2nd ed. 2002; 3rd ed. 2015) and has written more than 100 technical papers and application notes.


His technical expertise has supported cleanroom monitoring programs for the Space Shuttle, James Webb Space Telescope, U.S. Air Force, and SpaceX Dragon Crew Module. He has also lectured at leading institutions including SUNY Albany, National Taiwan University, UCLA, University of Texas, and the University of Colorado, covering topics in particle physics and mechanics.


Today, as Global Product Manager at TSI, he continues driving innovation, shaping product strategy, and helping TSI lead the field in precision environmental monitoring and contamination control.

TSI Incorporated

Alain is a Global Technical Lead and Senior Application Specialist TSI Incorporated, based in Aachen, Germany. With over 30 years in contamination control, cleanroom monitoring, and precision instrumentation, he supports global teams and customers in implementing advanced environmental monitoring strategies across pharmaceutical, semiconductor, and life science industries, including expertise in Facility Monitoring Systems (FMS) Software for real-time data management and compliance.


Before TSI, Alain held senior engineering and project management roles, leading complex cleanroom installations, particle monitoring systems, and facility validation projects. Known for blending technical expertise with practical application, he helps organizations achieve the highest standards of contamination control and regulatory compliance worldwide.


Alain is an active member of ISPE, PDA, IEEE, IRDS, and the UltraFacility community, contributing to industry best practices and innovation in contamination control.

Hyeongrak Cho is a water treatment expert and researcher at Kookmin University's Smart Water Environment Leading Laboratory (SWELL). Born in 1986, Cho obtained his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Kookmin University in Seoul, Korea, in September 2019. During his graduate studies, Cho focused his research on the treatment of water, wastewater, and desalination using membranes. In particular, he developed expertise in the treatment of highly concentrated salt wastewater, publishing a paper entitled "Effect of pre-treatment and operating conditions on the performance of membrane distillation for the treatment of shale gas wastewater" in Desalination (IF 6.035). Cho has conducted two successful projects on the treatment of highly concentrated wastewater. The first involved treating shale gas wastewater generated in Texas using the membrane distillation technique, and the second involved treating highly concentrated desalinated seawater using a semi-pilot MD instrument. Manuscripts from these projects are currently being submitted to high-impact water treatment journals. Cho's experience also includes knowledge of MF/UF, coagulation, and sedimentation for pre-treatment and chemical, physical, and ultrasonic washing for post-treatment. He has collaborated on desalination projects involving forward osmosis (FO), reverse osmosis (RO), reverse electrodialysis (RED), and capacitive deionization (CDI). In addition to his research, Cho is studying modeling for the automation of water treatment plants using Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Life Cycle Assessment for decreasing Carbon emission, Computational Fluid dynamics, and pipe analysis and design for Ultra pure water supply. Cho believes that his strong understanding of general and next-generation water treatment techniques and his experience in pilot operations make him a valuable asset to any research project.

Dr. Altun is the co-founder and CEO of UNISERS AG, an ETH Zurich spinoff from Switzerland. UNISERS has been developing a wafer defect inspection and review tool with a sub-10nm detection limit. Dr. Altun has 15-year experience in nanotechnology and optical sensing. Prior to his position at UNISERS AG, he did a Ph.D. at ETH Zurich. He worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (2011-2014) and Korean Institute of Machinery and Materials (2005-2010). He had his B.Sc. degree from METU (Middle East Tech. Univ.), Turkey and M.Sc. degree at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology).

UNISERS

Dr. Rushikesh (Rushi) Matkar is the Pathfinding Technologist for Water purification at Intel’s R&D Center in Hillsboro, OR and a corporate owner for the leadership roadmap of Intel's water management group. Responsible for driving solutions towards the success of Intel's high volume manufacturing roadmap. He is passionate about high purity delivery of utilities, IOT and advanced manufacturing. Between Academia and Industry, Rushi has extensive experience in bringing new IP to Market. Recently, Rushi successfully led the program to introduce EUV Lithography as a patterning solution for fabrication at Globalfoundries. He has served multiple roles within the leading nodes in technology management, operations and engineering management to help multiple technology nodes meet mass-market benefits.

Joey Zhang

Joey's Insights

UltraFacility 2025 Roundtable Summary: Speed or Accuracy? Instrumentation priorities for semiconductor water systems

More UltraFacility members