Alumni Spotlight: Christine Tan, Ph.D. 2011

Christine Tan is a chartered engineer and a fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology UK (IET). Tan completed degrees in biomedical engineering, graduating with a B.Eng. (First Class Honors) from Imperial College London, and a Ph.D. from Cornell University under the mentorship of professor Harold Craighead. Her Ph.D. research led to breakthroughs in nanofabricated single molecule/single cell chips for new biomedical applications such as cancer studies. The solid foundation in interdisciplinary thinking from a world-class education had well positioned Tan to take on key leadership roles in industry.

Previously, Tan was principal engineer at Globalfoundries, the world’s second-largest semiconductor microchip foundry, leading cross-functional teams to tackle multi-dimensional manufacturing challenges. Tan developed “best-in-class” design for manufacturability (DFM) solutions for increasing product line yield, serving customers such as Broadcom, Qualcomm, IBM, NXP. These efforts resulted in two published IEEE articles and subsequently won the Globalfoundries’ Global Quality Award Top Prize. Tan also served as program manager at Dornier Medizintechnik GmbH driving product quality, head of international business development (Photonics) at Shanghai International Micro-Tech Affiliation Center, and is currently chief technical advisor at ICA Technology and vice president of business development (strategy) at FIoT-Open Lab.

Tan is a rare hybrid combining deep technical expertise and business acumen, having fostered many international collaborations to industrialize emerging high-tech business. Some recent industrial accomplishments include Shanghai’s first Silicon Photonics International Platform and an IoT Joint Innovation Lab with INFINEON Technologies Germany.