Robert D. “Skip” Rung, MSEE

President and Executive Director
Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute

Mr. Rung is a senior high technology R&D executive with over 26 years of R&D management experience in CMOS process technology, application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design and electronic design automation (EDA), IC packaging, MEMS, microfluidics, and inkjet printing. 

Shortly after retiring in 2001 as the director of Advanced Research and Development at Hewlett-Packard’s Corvallis, OR inkjet technology headquarters, Mr. Rung was asked to start up the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI), Oregon’s first “Signature Research Center” and an unprecedented collaboration among Oregon’s research universities and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. ONAMI’s dual mission is to grow “small tech” research in Oregon and commercialize technology in order to extend the success of Oregon’s world-leading “Silicon Forest” technology cluster, which includes the most advanced R&D and manufacturing operations for leading companies such as Intel Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, FEI Company, Invitrogen/Life Technologies, Flir, Precision Castparts, Electro Scientific Industries, Planar Systems, Xerox Office Products, Tektronix,  ON Semiconductor and many dynamic smaller firms.  ONAMI has so far received $47M in state investment and its members have approximately quadrupled Oregon’s annual federal and private research awards in the fields of nanolaminates and transparent/printed electronics, green nanoscience and sustainable materials chemistry, nanoscale metrology, and microtechnology-based energy and chemical systems (MECS).  The ONAMI gap fund has helped launch or enable 25 spinoff or startup companies, which have raised over $95M in leveraged funding since late 2006.