A window for a clean room

Abbie (Carlstein) Gregg ’74 recalls that he refused to wear lab gloves in his MIT undergraduate research. There was little to fit the thread, at a time when undergraduate men were 15 and 1 on campus more than women. However, it was the first time he had met other women interested in engineering and technology, and he quickly found out. house in the Department of Metallurgy (now Materials Science and Engineering). Four decades later, Gregg has embarked on a career designing clean rooms and laboratories for semiconductor manufacturing and research around the world.

At MIT, Gregg was attracted to semiconductors. For his thesis, he and his collaborators sent semiconductor crystals into space to NASA’s Skylab, a theory to prove that gravity causes non-uniformity in crystal growth, which they predicted would lead to defects in circuit function as chips became more complex. “We brought the crystals to Earth and measured them, and they were pretty uniform,” he recalls; meanwhile, those who grew up on Earth “had all these uniformities.” Gregg would later rethink this work as a “thought experiment” for an aerospace company that studies the manufacture of devices in space.

After MIT, Gregg worked at Fairchild Semiconductor to improve manufacturing. Through discussions with employees, “I sparked interest in the built environment and optimizing both human factors and product performance,” he says.

Gregg began designing semiconductor manufacturing plants, and for about 10 years worked as a “drug startup” at several companies including Abbie Gregg, Inc. before it was created. AM Technical Solutions (currently Gregg is Chief Technology Officer). It strives to create safe, functional and aesthetically pleasing spaces with plenty of windows and natural light. “People don’t put windows in clean rooms, because it says‘ we don’t want to see an industry scene, ’” Gregg says. “But if a clean room looks beautiful, there’s something wrong; is poorly planned or not maintained “.

It led to one of Gregg’s favorite projects where he started: MIT. He did the initial planning and design of clean rooms and laboratories at MIT.nano, MIT’s new home for nanotechnology research. Shortly after it opened, it moved to campus in 2019 for its 45th reunion. “I stopped and watched the new graduates enter that building and show it to their parents,” he recalls. “That was the most amazing feeling. That’s my legacy. ”