Leadership Profile: Sass Somekh (Part 2)

Here Sass discusses his educational background, with a particular emphasis placed on his High School education which he received in Israel. Additionally, he covers the early years of his career. The disparities he notes between High School education in the United States and other parts of the world is another item of interest. In many of our interviews, as we speak with immigrant entrepreneurs, the theme of US high school education being inadequate raises its nasty head.

SM: Did you receive your masters and PhD in Israel? SS: No, I did my undergraduate in Israel, and then I came to the US to do my masters and PhD at Cal Tech.

SM: Today it seems that Israel has a phenomenal technical education system. Was that already in place at the time? SS: Education in Israel has been great all along. High School in Israel is much more difficult. At the end of High School you have a matriculation exam and if you do not pass this exam, you do not graduate. In the US, the last year of High School students have already been accepted into college, and they don’t learn anything else. Their last year is an enjoyment year, whereas in Europe and Israel the last year is the most difficult year when you have to clear all the exams.

SM: I grew up in India and it was exactly the same thing – a very grueling year, especially the last few months. You came to Cal Tech after college? SS: I graduated with a PhD in Physics / Electrical Engineering. I did my PhD in integrated optics, which became a real rage 20 years later. The initial work was done in the early 70’s. After graduating I decided to do something more practical and went to Bell Labs to work with semiconductors. I stayed there for five years, and then joined Intel in 1978. It was a relatively small company at the time and had about 500 employees; however it was growing by leaps and bounds.

My responsibility was to bring Intel into the era known as Dry Etch, where you etch the wafers in a vacuum system and using ions, as opposed to using some sort of acid. This allows etching of much smaller dimensions.

[to be continued]

[Part 1]

This segment is part 2 in the series : Leadership Profile: Sass Somekh
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