ECS researcher awarded prestigious Research Fellowship

An ECS researcher whose PhD results have already been patented by the University has been awarded a prestigious five-year research fellowship.

Dr Huda Abdel Wahab Abdel Rahim El Mubarek of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton has been awarded a prestigious five-year research fellowship by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) jointly with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). This is the first time that this award has been made to a female member of the University.

During her fellowship Dr El Mubarek will be researching novel methods of dopant diffusion suppression in semiconductors. This is a further development of the doctoral research which she completed in Southampton in 2004 with Professor Peter Ashburn, in which she has shown that a properly optimised fluorine implant is able to completely suppress boron transient enhanced diffusion in silicon and silicon-germanium and significantly reduce boron thermal diffusion. These important results have been patented by the University of Southampton and will now be commercially exploited by Innos Limited.

Dr El Mubarek came to Southampton from Sudan in 1996 as an undergraduate student, drawn by the reputation of the School of Electronics and Computer Science. In 1999 she graduated top of the first class honours category in her degree cohort in Electronic Engineering and won numerous prizes for her achievements, including the Dean's Award for Best Performance throughout her degree.

'I'm delighted to have received the RAEng/EPSRC Fellowship,' she said, 'and I am looking forward to the exciting opportunity which it will give me to continue with my research here for the next five years.'

'Southampton is simply the best place for me to undertake this research,' she added, 'because of the facilities in the University and the Innos cleanroom and the team. It's a very friendly environment and I am very happy to be here.'