Exploring the byways

Scholvin claims that the primary purpose of cleanrooms during his undergraduate years was the construction of transistors.He collaborated with IBM on new design strategies for high frequency power applications as part of his doctoral research on transistor technology.Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have pushed the boundaries of nanoscale fabrication in numerous other directions over the past few decades.

According to Scholvin, the semiconductor industry “creates a highway where things move with great ease and efficiency.”In academia, you investigate the areas to the right and left of that highway.You’re exploring all of the nitty-gritty routes to see if any of them can, once more, advance the whole thing.That frequently takes place at the crossroads of various fields.

During his postdoctoral work in the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology’s Synthetic Neurobiology Group at MIT, Scholvin personally experienced that.His coworkers looked into how these probes could be used in medical and brain research while Scholvin came up with methods for making new kinds of neural recording electrodes.Together, they turned the technology into a company called Neural Dynamics Technologies with funding from the National Institutes of Health.