January 10, 2006 – Aubrey “Bill” Tobey, president of ACT International, has been presented with the seventh annual Bob Graham award for “outstanding contributions in semiconductor equipment and materials marketing” by SEMI.

Tobey was a key figure in making the wafer stepper a central part of the semiconductor manufacturing process, conceptualizing the wafer stepper as a natural extension of the D.W. Mann photorepeater and promoting its advantages over the once-popular e-beam direct exposure approach. He spent the 1950s and 1960s at MIT and Tufts, working at GCA Corp. from 1965-1983 leading marketing efforts for the company’s wafer handling, imaging, and patterning systems, and expanding business worldwide through joint ventures with Sumitomo Corp. in Japan and Matra in France.

Tobey is an advisory board member of Solid State Technology, and currently board member of Rudolph Technologies, and serves as a technical advisory for both stepper supplier Ultratech Inc., and Arradiance Inc., a developer of maskless lithography systems.

The Bob Graham award is named for the late industry leader who helped found Intel and establish leading companies including Applied Materials Inc. and Novellus Systems Inc.