People: Physicist Returns To Israel To Oversee New Submicron Institute At Weizmann

After spending 17 years in the United States, Israeli-born physicist Mordehai Heiblum has returned to his native country to head the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Center for Submicron Research at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. Since 1978, Heiblum has worked at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., where he most recently was the manager and a research staff member of IBM's microstructure physics group. His present interests include ballistic electrons in semiconductors and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE).

At Weizmann, Heiblum will supervise the construction of a research complex that will combine MBE with advanced optical and electron-beam techniques to study new materials and submicron structures. The study of minute semiconductor devices could lead to the discovery of new physical phenomena, as well as the development of components faster and smaller than those operating today.

Heiblum expects that it will take him...