From Myanmar to Microchips: Aung Paing’s Award-Winning Push to Improve Semiconductor Precision

Each year, only a small number of graduate research projects earn distinction for advancing not just academic understanding, but also the future of an industry itself. Aung Paing has earned the 2026 SJSU Outstanding Thesis Award in recognition of his exceptional research and academic excellence in chemical and materials engineering. Paing's research was judged not only on technical rigor, but on originality, scientific contribution and potential real-world impact. In a field where progress is measured in nanometers and breakthroughs can influence the global semiconductor supply chain, the honor signaled that Aung's work had risen above the ordinary demands of graduate study.

His thesis tackled one of the semiconductor industry's most urgent challenges: how to produce smaller, more precise chip patterns while reducing the microscopic inconsistencies that threaten performance as circuits approach atomic-scale dimensions. The work placed him inside a major federally supported research initiative tied to the future of American semiconductor manufacturing.

For Paing, the recognition arrived almost accidentally.

"I was hoping I would win," Paing said, "but when it actually happened, it was still a complete surprise."

He had already logged off work for the day when the congratulatory email landed unnoticed in his inbox. The following morning, messages from classmates and colleagues began appearing before he fully understood what had happened. During a research meeting with collaborators at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), the realization finally settled in: His master's thesis had earned one of the program's top academic honors.

For many graduate students, awards mark the culmination of years of carefully plotted ambition. For Paing, the moment represented something more personal: a return to the discipline he feared he had drifted too far from.

Originally from Burma, Paing completed his undergraduate engineering degree in 2011 before building a career across the Middle East and Southeast Asia. He worked in the oil and gas industry in Dubai and later returned home to Myanmar, where he spent nearly a decade managing operations for a nationwide appliance distribution company. By 2023, he had risen to a senior management role overseeing logistics, personnel and day-to-day business operations.

But the farther he advanced, the more distant engineering itself became.

"My interest is in engineering," he said. "I love engineering."

In 2023, facing political instability in Myanmar and feeling unfulfilled in corporate management work, he made the difficult decision to leave behind his career and family to pursue graduate studies at San José State University. Although he had visited the United States once before in 2014 for training in Oklahoma through his employer, Schlumberger, this move was far more significant personally and professionally.

Paing chose SJSU because of its strong ties to the semiconductor industry and the positive experiences shared by friends and alumni, believing it would provide the ideal environment to reconnect with engineering and advance his education. While adjusting to a new life was challenging, he saw the experience as an important investment in his future and personal growth. His hard work and determination ultimately paid off when he earned his master's degree in chemical and materials engineering in Fall 205, fulfilling a long-standing dream.

The thesis that earned recognition placed him inside one of the most consequential scientific races underway: the effort to improve semiconductor manufacturing precision.

Working as part of the Center for High Precision Patterning Science (CHiPPS), a collaboration involving LBNL and university researchers, Paing studied photoresists - ultra-thin polymer coatings essential to semiconductor fabrication. These materials help define the microscopic patterns etched onto silicon wafers, patterns so small that even tiny inconsistencies can undermine chip performance.

As the semiconductor industry pushes toward ever-smaller circuitry, those inconsistencies become increasingly dangerous. Engineers call the problem "stochasticity" - the random molecular variation that can distort patterns at nanoscale dimensions.

Paing's research focused on a promising polymer family known as polypeptoids, materials prized for their unusual uniformity and controllable structure. His work examined how those polymers dissolved during chip fabrication and how subtle molecular changes affected pattern quality.

What made the research especially compelling was that some findings challenged long-standing assumptions within the field.

"We were seeing behavior against the standard knowledge in the field," he said.

The discovery forced months of additional simulations, modeling and literature review. Weekly meetings with researchers from academia and industry evolved into collaborative investigations into why the materials behaved differently than expected.

The implications could prove significant. If manufacturers can better control randomness inside photoresist films, they may produce smaller, cleaner and more reliable chip patterns, a critical advantage as the global semiconductor industry strains against the physical limits of miniaturization.

For Paing, however, the award represented something beyond scientific recognition.

It affirmed that after years spent managing businesses and navigating instability, he had returned to the work that first drew him to engineering: solving difficult problems, pursuing uncertainty and uncovering something no one had fully understood before.