Open to the public, our speaker series is designed for students and community members to hear from professionals on topics that broaden attendees’ understanding of the world and add depth to experiences. It is also an opportunity for our alumni and community members to engage with our students, potential future employees.
Fall 2025 Speakers
Dr. Benjamin Yee
Senior Staff Plasma Physicist, Lam Research Corporation
"Changes in Plasma Deposition Systems for Semiconductor Manufacturing"
Thursday, Oct. 9
1:30 p.m., Parkview Room (D-132), Floyd Hall
About this talk: Advances in semiconductor devices are enabling many new technologies, from large-language models to quantum computing. Plasma-assisted deposition is a key component to such advances, as it provides the ability to deposit films with highly tunable properties at low temperatures with atomic precision. This seminar will cover the fundamentals of plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition and plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition, how these systems are engineered and the challenges that arise in developing the next generation of plasma deposition equipment. Particular attention will be paid to the realities of engineering and supporting plasma systems for high volume manufacturing.
About Dr. Yee: Dr. Benjamin Yee is a Senior Staff Plasma Physicist at Lam Research Corporation with the Source Engineering group, where he specializes in capacitively coupled plasmas, plasma metrology and plasma stability. Yee obtained his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences from the University of Michigan, where he studied nanosecond discharges. He is an author or co-author on 20 peer-reviewed journal articles, received the S&T Collaborative Environment Award from Sandia National Laboratories, was a NASA Graduate Student Research Fellow, an Engineering Outreach Teaching Fellow at the University of Michigan and a Michigan Institute of Plasma Science and Engineering fellow. Prior to joining Lam Research Corporation, Yee was a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, where he specialized in laser plasma diagnostics, sheath physics, and breakdown initiation. He helped found the Sandia Plasma Research Facility and was a member of the LXCat Technical Team.
Dr. Sajal K. Das
Curator's Distinguished Professor and Daniel St. Clair Endowed Chair in Computer Science, Missouri University of Science and Technology
"From Smart Sensing to Smart Living: The Era of IoT, AI/ML and Data Science"
Friday, Oct. 24
11:00 a.m., Parkview Room (D-132), Floyd Hall
About this talk: We live in an era in which our physical and cyber environments are increasingly intertwined owing to the advent of smart devices, sensors, Internet of Things (IoT), drones, cyber-physical systems (CPS), wireless communications, AI/ML and data science. These technologies help collect and analyze multi-modal heterogeneous data about events of interest, resulting in actionable inferences and decisions in what is called Smart Living CPS. The goal is to improve quality of life in a variety of smart environments, such as smart homes and cities, smart grid, smart transportation, smart manufacturing, smart health, and precision agriculture. However, such systems pose significant challenges due to the scale, complexity, heterogeneity, uncertainty, interdependence, resource limitations, human behavior randomness, security, privacy and trust issues. This talk will highlight unique challenges and novel solutions to design and model resilient, secure and trustworthy smart living CPS. Our innovative approaches are based on rich theoretical and practical design principles, such as AI/ML algorithms, time-series data analytics, sensor fusion, uncertainty reasoning, information theory, prospect theory, reputation/belief models, graph theory, and game theory. Experimental results for real-world case studies will be presented for smart energy, transportation, water distribution networks, health and agriculture applications. The talk will be concluded with directions for future research.
About Dr. Das: Dr. Sajal K. Das is curators’ distinguished professor and Daniel St. Clair endowed chair in computer science at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He served the U.S. National Science Foundation as a program director in the computer and network systems division. His interdisciplinary research spans cyber-physical systems, IoT, drones, cybersecurity, machine learning, data science, wireless and sensor networks, mobile and pervasive computing, smart environments, edge-cloud computing, HPC, graph theory and game theory. He has made fundamental contributions to his field, published extensively in top-tier journals, peer-reviewed conferences and coauthored 60 book chapters and four books. Das is the founding editor-in-chief of Elsevier’s Pervasive and Mobile Computing journal and serves as an Associate Editor of several other publications. He has served as general and program chair of numerous conferences and is a founder of IEEE PerCom, WoWMoM, SMARTCOMP and ACM ICDCN. Das is a recipient of 14 Best Paper Awards in flagship conferences, and holds awards for teaching, mentoring and research, including IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Achievement Award and University of Missouri System President’s Award for Sustained Career Excellence. Das is a distinguished alumnus of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and a fellow of the IEEE, National Academy of Inventors, and Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association.
Want to request a speaker?
WMU faculty are encouraged to request a speaker using the form linked below. Requests for fall speakers are due April 18. Requests for spring speakers are due Nov. 3.
For more information about the Custer Speaker Series, email Kayla Lambert.
