Avtar S. Oberai

Avtar Singh Oberai was born January 19, 1933 in Chakwal, India, present day Pakistan. As a child, he taught himself to repair the family radio, an experience which inspired a lifelong love of electronics. In 1947 he lived through the Partition of India and Pakistan, migrating from the Punjab to northern India. He received his undergraduate degree in engineering in Pune, before migrating to England to pursue a doctorate in Electrical Engineering at Imperial College, London. Upon his arrival, he was bestowed the nickname "Obi" by a roommate. This is the name he was known by throughout his life by his friends, colleagues, wife, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. As a student, while standing on the train platform in Victoria Station, London, he met the love of his life, Joan Mason. Both were headed to a student conference in Berlin. In his words, "it was the trip of a lifetime which turned into a life". The two were married in May of 1962 and celebrated at Kew Gardens. They went on to have three daughters, Corina, Veneeta and Surinda, and build a beautiful life. He began his career at Pye in Cambridge, England, moving on to RCA in Montreal, Canada, before a storied career at IBM in East Fishkill, NY, Essex, VT, Austin, TX and Somers, NY. In 1967 in an IBM lab, Obi and a technician laid a circuit on a one micron wafer and when it worked he said "Great! Now let's try half that size." That was the foundation of the semiconductor technology he and his team developed for IBM. When his daughter asked him why he was doing this work he told her that one day she would be able to hold a computer in the palm of her hand. Obi's hard work and vision led to many patents and defined him as a key contributor to the semiconductor industry. As a founding director of SEMATECH in Austin, TX, he created a strategy to rejuvenate the US semiconductor industry by encouraging collaboration between all the consortium's partner companies. His life and his work took him around the world; he lived in four countries, worked in countless more, and traveled whenever he could. He valued family and education beyond all else. He lived his values so fully in his life that he left an indelible imprint on his descendants, 9 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. Obi left this life peacefully at the age of 92, on January 23rd, 2025, in Austin, Texas surrounded by his Lovely Wife and his three daughters. We have no doubt about the values that he wanted us to inherit; invest wisely, invest in learning, invest in life experiences, invest in yourself, and invest in love.

Avtar S. Oberai

January 19, 1933 - January 23, 2025