James R. Potashnik is a Patent Engineer and is currently a Juris Doctor candidate at the University of Akron School of Law. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics cum laude from John Carroll University in 2001, where he was president of Sigma Pi Sigma, and a member of Pi Mu Epsilon and Alpha Sigma Nu. He also received a Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering in 2003 from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a research fellow, and a Master of Science in Physics in 2005 from the Ohio State University, where he was also a research fellow.

During the course of his academic career, in addition to extensive coursework in electromagnetics, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics, James was involved in a wide range of research projects. He has worked in the field of high energy physics, making fiber optic wave guides used in the CDF particle detector, performing Monte Carlo simulations of B physics, and performing generator level simulations of Higgs processes and backgrounds to be used in association with various projects at Fermi National Accelerator Lab.  He has also worked in the field of polymer electronics, in particular studying the operation and fabrication of organic based semiconductors.

Prior to his work at the firm, James was a development engineer with IBM in East Fishkill, NY. While at IBM he worked on groundrule development for the 45 nm and 32nm technology nodes. In particular, he focused on back end metallization and passive devices.  

Selected Publications:

1. J. Potashnik, A. Gabor, P. Selvam, “Design Polishing,” Presented at Litho Symposium 2006, hosted by IBM, Yorktown Heights, New York (2006)
2. R.E. Belford, W. Zhao, J. Potashnik, Q. Liu, and A. Seabaugh, “Performance-augmented CMOS using back-end uniaxial strain”, 60th Device Research Conference Digest, IEEE catalog number 02TH8606, 41-42 (2002).