Tony Oates received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Reading, U.K. in 1985. He then joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in Allentown, PA, as a post-doctoral member of the technical staff, where his research focused on defects in silicon crystals. In 1987, he joined the VLSI technology development laboratory of AT&T Bell Laboratories and since then he has studied failure mechanisms in CMOS technologies. He is currently a member of the technology development organization of Agere Systems (formerly the Microelectronics Division of Lucent Technologies), where he is a technical manager with responsibility for technology reliability. He has published over 40 papers in the areas of interconnect and circuit reliability. He is a member of the management committee of the International Reliability Physics Symposium, serving as the symposium General Chair in 2001. He is also involved in paper selection activities for the International Electron Devices Meeting. He has edited 2 conference proceedings on microelectronics materials reliability for the Materials Research Society.