October 21, 2005 – Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) has announced the recipients of its 2005 SEMI North America and Lifetime Achievement awards. Bob Shillman, Bill Silver, and Marilyn Matz, the founders of Cognex Corp., received the North America honors in recognition of their contributions in machine-vision inspection for the semiconductor industry; and James S. (Jim) Koford will receive the Lifetime Achievement award for contributions to computer-automated IC simulation and design.

Shillman is chairman and CEO at Cognex; Silver is a senior VP and Senior Fellow at the company. Matz, who held roles as VP, software engineering, and senior VP, worldwide engineering at Cognex, now oversees the development and marketing of PC-based vision products and oversees the vision R&D group as senior VP at PC Vision. Together, the three set new standards in optical character recognition and industrial applications of machine vision.

Koford, a co-founder of LSI Logic and the founder of Monterey Design Systems, which was acquired by Synopsys in 2004, developed the IC industry’s first logic and functional design simulators and the first downstream design tools such as physical verification, design-rule check, and place-and-route.