Lall Receives Research Grant from NSF

Pradeep Lall an Auburn University faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering has received a 3-year grant from NSF to research the shock and vibration reliability of Electronic and MEMS Packaging.

According to Lall, Associate Director of the NSF Center for Advanced Vehicle Electronics (CAVE) at Auburn University, the proposed research will develop fundamental knowledge for leap-frogging state-of-art in convergent communication technologies. The present grant research has several major thrusts including failure physics, materials, interfaces and development of models for prediction of failure.

"This grant will provide us the sustained research support over a period of time to establish Auburn's leadership in the area of damage tolerant portable electronics," says Lall. "The effort will also enable CAVE to expand the scope of extreme environments to include shock and vibration".

CAVE, is a nationally renowned center focused on harsh electronic environments. The center is partially funded by NSF and Industrial members.

In order to support a strong research program, Lall has developed state-of-art experimental capabilities focused on high strain-rate events and computationally intensive modeling. Equipment in the Transient Dynamics Laboratory includes state of high speed cameras, high-speed image analysis systems and high speed data acquisition systems. The computational Research Laboratory includes multi-processor workstations and software for modeling and simulation.

Lall has published extensively in the area of Electronic Packaging. He has authored and co-authored several book chapters, holds several patents and engineering awards, and is the lead author on the book titled "Influence of Temperature on Microelectronic and System Reliability" published by CRC Press. Lall is an Associate Editor for the ASME Journal of Electronic Packaging.