Robinson Pino

Travels in Electrical Engineering: from the Land of Eternal Spring to IBM
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY



Robinson Pino received his PhD in January 2005, after being a fellow at the Teraherz Science and Technology IGERT at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Here is his story in his own words:

"I was born in the city of Medellin, Colombia, South America, where I attended elementary and high school and lived for 17 years. Medellin is the capital of Antioquia, a department in Colombia, and it enjoys a temperate climate that gives the city the names of "The Land of Eternal Spring" and "Capital of the Flowers." The city was founded in 1616 in the scenic Aburra valley, but remained small until the coffee boom fueled its growth. Medellin is Colombia's second largest city, as well as a commercial flower growing region, specially known for orchids.

"I moved to the United States with my family in 1996. In the summer of 1997, I joined the Electrical Engineering department of the City College of the City University of New York to pursue a Bachelors in Engineering degree. After graduation in 2002, I joined the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to pursue a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering. I worked with Partha Dutta in the Department of Electrical Computer and Systems Engineering. We characterized and modeled the electro-optical properties of III-V compound semiconductors and their suitability as potential emitters of THz radiation.

"More specifically, I studied native defect compensation in III-antimonide semiconductors (binary and ternary) employing various techniques such as low temperature growth and extrinsic doping. Then, the obtained semiconductor materials were characterized for emission of radiation using time-domain THz emission spectroscopy (TDTES). Finally, employing current hypotheses for THz emission from semiconductor surfaces, namely the surface-field effect and the photo-Dember effect, I was able to reconcile theory and experiment by modeling the THz emission properties from the extracted dc Hall-effect electrical parameters which matched the optical observations from TDTES experimental measurements."

Robinson is now an Advisory Engineer at the IBM Microelectronics division in Burlington, Vermont, in the CMOS Modeling and Characterization group.

To learn more about the Teraherz Science and Technology IGERT at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, see http://www.rpi.edu/dept/phys/graduate/igert.html

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