JOSEPH B. BERNSTEIN is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Bar Ilan University and formerly from the Mechanical Engineering department at University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Bernstein received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1990 and he is actively involved in microelectronics device and systems reliability research and physics of failure including power device reliability, ultra-thin gate oxide integrity, radiation effects, MEMS and laser programmable metal interconnect. He supervises the laboratory for failure analysis and reliability of microelectronic devices and is the head of the microelectronics device reliability program. Research areas include statistical interactions of multiple failure mechanisms in ULSI devices. He also works extensively with the semiconductor industry on projects relating to system qualification for reliability based on fundamental physics and circuit simulation techniques and on programmable devices and repair in microelectronic circuits and packaging.