Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Yaw S. Obeng (Fed)

Dr. Obeng has over 30 years of proven technical leadership in corporate, entrepreneurial and academic environments. Currently, he serves as a Research Chemist  in the Nanoscale Imaging Group in the Nanoscale Device Characterization Division. His current research interests include developing new measurements, physical models, and data analysis techniques and tools to enable quantitative and mechanistic assessment of reliability issues in emerging nanoelectronic devices. The developed metrology will aid advanced manufacturing, heterogeneous integration, security and commercialization of advanced complex integrated systems. See his Metrology for Emerging Integrated Systems Project for details.

Obeng previously worked with AT&T Bell Laboratories,  Lucent Technologies, Agere Systems and Texas Instruments. He has also co-founded two start-up companies (psiloQuest, Inc and Nkanea Technologies, Inc.) dedicated to the development of novel materials for semiconductor and optoelectronics fabrication. He is an inventor on over 50 U.S. and international patents, and has published over 150 papers in various technical publications. Dr. Obeng has a passion for mentoring; he has served on numerous graduate student dissertation committees.  He currently holds an adjunct Professorship at Clemson University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK, Fellow of the American institute of Chemists and Senior Member of IEEE.

Publications

Patents (2018-Present)

Image of 2 security officers inspecting packages

Authentication Article and Process for Making Same

NIST Inventors
Yaw S. Obeng and Joseph J. Kopanski
Patent Description This invention provides for a new and useful metrology to enable counterfeit detection system capable of uniquely marking items by encoding information in their physical structure at the nanoscale. The system depends on rapidly encoding information in the physical structure of an
Created September 10, 2019, Updated December 8, 2022