Raghuveer Makala

Dr. Raghuveer Makala is Process R&D Engineering Director of Advanced Module Development Group at Western Digital, Milpitas (California) leading Research & Development efforts on Thin Films & New Materials to enable 3D NAND Flash Memory and extend scaling for future nodes. His team’s recent focus has been on developing 64 Layer and 96 Layer 3D NAND in addition to working on research efforts for emerging memories. Dr. Makala has been with SanDisk (now Western Digital) for the last 12+ years and has worked on multiple high value process engineering problems starting from R&D phase to eventual deployment in mass production.

Prior to SanDisk, Dr. Makala worked at Novellus Systems (now Lam Research) with focus on ALD and CVD of barriers and metal films. Dr. Makala obtained his PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2006) located at Troy, New York, USA and MS from NC State University (2002) located at Raleigh, North Carolina, USA − both in Materials Science & Engineering. During his PhD, he also received the MRS Gold Award from Materials Research Society (MRS), in honor of his academic and scientific research achievements.

His research efforts have so far resulted in 125+ US patents with several more pending and 35+ published papers and conference presentations.