Brian Wright received the Significant Contributor Award at the HDP Member Meeting in March 2026 for his exceptionally outstanding contributions to the Final Finish Layer Deposits for High Frequency project. The Significant Contributor Award recognizes individual contributions to an HDP project that significantly exceed those of any other team member and without which the project would have been severely restricted or unable to be completed.

During the test coupon design phase, Brian conceived a new coupon concept on the spot during a team call and proposed it by sketching in real time. After team alignment on this innovative concept, Brian advanced the design by proposing the inclusion of not only nominal 50-ohm impedance traces but also intentionally narrower and wider traces, effectively mitigating impedance variation risk and enabling wider traces to be used reliably for insertion-loss measurements.

Brian personally conducted all 24 types of measurements, independently verifying measurement repeatability and ensuring statistically sufficient sample sizes. He measured more than 100 coupons to establish a baseline that allowed the team to focus evaluations on woven laminates only, significantly simplifying the measurement setup and avoiding unnecessary large-scale testing.

In the statistical analysis phase, Brian drew upon his extensive hands-on experience in high-frequency measurement to propose physically sound hypotheses and guide decisions regarding additional sample specifications. His exceptional measurement discipline and deep expertise in high-frequency phenomena were invaluable to the project and are expected to be equally invaluable to Phase 3 investigations. Please join us in congratulating Brian on this award.