Nextreme Hires Stephen Brooks as Director of Manufacturing

Nextreme Thermal Solutions Inc., a Research Triangle Park, N.C.-based manufacturer of microscale thermal and power management products for the electronics industry, has named Stephen Brooks as director of manufacturing. Brooks will coordinate the company's move into its new 14,000-sq-ft facility and establish volume manufacturing systems for its thermal copper pillar bump technology used in flip-chip applications such as microprocessors, medical devices, chip sets, display drivers, watches and analog/mixed signal devices. Brooks has more than 24 years of experience in managing the transition of high-technology companies from research and development to volume manufacturing. Prior to joining Nextreme, he served as director of operations at Amkor Technology in Morrisville, N.C., scaling up the company's back-end flip-chip solder bumping capability. He has also served as director of operations with JDS Uniphase -- formerly Cronos Integrated Microsystems -- where he was responsible for establishing a new MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) wafer fabrication facility in North Carolina. Before that, he held multiple management positions in manufacturing and business operations during his 15 years at Mitsubishi Semiconductor’s DRAM production facility in North Carolina. He also spent more than two years working in Mitsubishi’s microelectronics manufacturing operations in Osaka and Kumamoto, Japan.