Doug Pauls, Collins Aerospace, Receives Dieter Bergman IPC Fellowship Award

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The Dieter Bergman IPC Fellowship Award is given to individuals who have fostered a collaborative spirit, made significant contributions to standards development, and have consistently demonstrated a commitment to global standardization efforts and the electronics industry. Each recipient will be eligible to bestow the Dieter Bergman Memorial Scholarship upon the university or college of his/her choice.

Doug Pauls holds a B.A. in chemistry and physics from Carthage College, Kenosha, Wisconsin, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He worked nine years for the Navy, eight years as technical director of Contamination Studies Labs, and 19 years at Rockwell Collins (now Collins Aerospace), in the Advanced Operations Engineering group, where he is a principal materials and process engineer. Doug was awarded the Rockwell Collins Arthur A. Collins Engineer of the Year Award in 2004. 

Doug is a long-time IPC chairman and was awarded the IPC’s Hall of Fame Award in 2017. Most notably, he is known for his expertise in surface insulation resistance testing, cleaning and cleanliness assessment, conformal coatings, and how to investigate and qualify manufacturing processes. He has been a U.S. representative to ISO and IEC working groups on SIR, electromigration, and cleanliness reliability standards. He has participated in numerous national and international consortia on electronics manufacturing materials and processes. He recently led a team of SMEs to redefine the cleanliness provisions of J-STD-001, culminating in what is presently J-STD-001H.

Patty Goldman: Doug, we’re here to congratulate you on the Dieter Bergman Fellowship Award, which is quite an honor.

Doug Pauls: It is. I was quite surprised when John Mitchell called and told me I had been elected to receive it. I was shocked that I had gotten this. I know my friend and colleague, Dave Hillman, was one of the original recipients of that award. But I hadn’t really much thought about it. I didn’t really think that what I have done was really in line with what his award stands for. I think back on my interactions with Dieter. When I was a young engineer and mammoths roamed the earth, he was one of the giants of the industry.

A lot of people I met were dedicated to a technology, or they might be dedicated to their company. He was the first person that I had ever known who was truly dedicated to the industry itself, not really caring about where a technology came from; he was not an advocate of the “not invented here” syndrome.

While he and I did not always agree on things, I always had a great deal of respect for him for what he did to make sure that the technology paths we pursued were right for the industry, and not just as an organization. To be even mentioned in the same breath as Dieter for that same thing was both very gratifying and very humbling to me.

Goldman: That’s a good way to describe Dieter. He was really like a freight train. He wanted it all and he did it all. But you’re quite active in various parts of IPC and committee work. What committees are you involved with right now?

Pauls: Since turning over the cleaning and coating work to Jason Keeping, I’ve been trying to work my way out of a lot of the active leadership stuff. I’m doing what I can to promote a lot of the new and up-and-coming members of IPC and shifting more into a mentoring role. I’m still very active with J-STD-1 and IPC-A-610. I’m still very active in all the cleaning and coating aspects of IPC, and the associated specifications. As a Technical Fellow for Collins Aerospace, I am our technical lead in both electronics cleaning and electronics coating. It is part of my job responsibilities to stay as a leader in those areas and that’s where most of my focus is these days.

To read this conversation, which appeared in the Real Time with... IPC APEX EXPO 2022 Show & Tell Magazine, click here.