Director
Analytics, Applications and Business Development
Vibe Imaging Analytics
Woodside, California

Biography:

Matt Richter received his BA in Physics from UCSD and his PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University. Always working in industry, he has focused on development of instrumentation for real time process control using a wide range of technologies: optical spectroscopies from the UV to the Mid-IR; Atomic Force and Scanning Tunneling microscopies; image based analysis for semiconductor fault detection and grain analysis; and multivariate analysis techniques for improved process control and fault detection in the Semiconductor and Agricultural sectors. Currently, Matt is the Director of Analytics, Applications and Business Development at Vibe Imaging Analytics.

Statement:

My name is Matt Richter and this is not my first go round with the APS. After receiving my PhD from Stanford in 1993, I spent most of my early career working in very small (three people) to small (35 or so) companies before I landed at MKS Instruments. My involvement in small companies combined with my presence on the APS Academic Council as a Member-At-Large is why I was asked to be part of the original founding crew of FIAP. Since then, I’ve founded my own company (that sadly I closed in 2013) and currently work in the agricultural sector bringing quantitative measurement to an industrial sector that still measures many things by hand! When I helped launch FIAP way back when, the main issues that we were trying to address were to increase the profile of physicists working in the private sector in the APS, as well as help market physics and physicists to industry and the private sector. Both these issues still need work. But in the past few years, new urgent issues have arisen: the fight against junk science, willful ignorance and the reduction of investment in the sciences, both basic and applied. Traditionally, physics has, for better or worse, tended to shy away from self-promotion, marketing of the field to the public at large, and political activity of any type. If elected, I will use my position to further not only the promotion of industrial and applied physics within the APS, but also put effort into increasing participation in the greater public debate from physicist so as fight the tide of junk science, increase the public understanding of the complex issues facing us all, and increase data driven decisions.