Eight Years Later, Back in DC

By: Alumnus Chagaan Baatar, '95

Some alumni who went to Maryland physics graduate program in late 1980's to early 1990's will remember me as Chagarn Whan. I finished up my dissertation with Professor Chris Lobb at the Center for Superconductivity Research in 1995. My Ph.D. thesis concentrated on Nb-based low temperature superconducting Josephson Junction arrays that include both experimental and some numerical modeling work.

After Maryland, I went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a postdoc, working on semiconductor quantum dots and quantum dot arrays. Following MIT, I was employed at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center working on circuit simulation and optimization. From 1998 to earlier this year, I was a member of the technical staff at the Lucent Technologies' optical networking chief technology officer organization. At Lucent, I was involved in optical network architecture design and product planning. Recently, I moved back to the Washington, D.C. metro area to join the Office of Naval Research as a program officer in nanoelectronics.

After several years in the industry, it is refreshing to get back in the research community. I believe my industrial experience does help me bring in some different, and hopefully healthy, prospective on why we do research. I am currently working with several campus professors, and I hope many more will join us in exploring the exciting field of nanoelectronics.

On a personal level, I am married with 3 children, ranging in ages 7 months to 5 years. My wife Alimaa is trained as an economist with a specialty in industrial economics. Prior to our relocation to the D.C. area, she worked for an economic consulting firm in Princeton, New Jersey. Currently we are still in the process of settling down in Northern Virginia.

I am looking forward to hearing from other alumni on their career and life. I can be reached by email at: cbaatar@ieee.org.