Message from Gary Kirchner

Mike Liu has been selected as the recipient of the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award.  This award is presented to employees for their lifetime technical achievements and demonstrates how their work positively impacts customers and/or the business.  This accomplishment is about pushing the limits of expertise, a quest for excellence and a drive for growth.  It is an honor shared by very few within Honeywell.  It’s a distinction reserved for those whose contributions are among the very best in our field.

Mike joined Honeywell in 1968 after receiving his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota.  For nearly 40 years, his research has advanced engineering knowledge in ways that have benefited both Honeywell and our industry.  

Honeywell’s reputation for radiation-hard microelectronics has been enhanced significantly by Mike's work.  He has focused on understanding basic radiation effects mechanisms and mitigation approaches for CMOS technology to help Honeywell achieve industry leading rad hard product capability.  Honeywell was first with production of reliable radiation-hard Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) products for military and space applications, due in part to his co-invention of a point contact transistor to screen incoming SOI insulator wafers for defects and contamination.  Honeywell gained a competitive advantage in rad-hard microelectronics from his techniques for total dose and single-event upset hardening on SOI integrated circuits.  His work helped Honeywell win and successfully implement the $150 million Radiation Hardened Microelectronics Advanced Technology Development program from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Early in his Honeywell career, Mike led joint research and development of submicron devices.  This laid a strong foundation for government pursuits like the Very High Speed Integrated Circuit program – worth more than $90 million – that was awarded to Honeywell.   His engineering successes earned him legacy-Honeywell’s highest engineering honor – the H.W. Sweatt Award – twice, first in 1977 for leading pyroelectric and ferroelectric materials research for infrared detector applications, and then in 1995 for making SOI wafers production-worthy.

Viewed as an industry expert in the radiation-hardened microelectronics field, in recent years he’s been called upon by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Naval Research Laboratory for specialized collaborations.  His work has resulted in more than 20 patents, including at least four currently pending, and others that are classified.  Today Honeywell is one of the world’s leading rad-hard ASIC and Memory product providers for the U.S. Department of Defense.  We can thank Mike for much of that success.

In the past 16 years, Mike has published 86 articles related to SOI materials and devices, served on the IEEE SOI committee and chaired its international conference. Overall, he’s produced 145 technical papers in his Honeywell career.  He also is known for his work as a mentor for graduate students and interns.

Join us in congratulating Mike, for his many engineering achievements and outstanding technical expertise!