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Abby (Karlstein) Gregg ’74 recalls giving up lab gloves during her research at MIT. There was not one small enough to match her at a time when there were more undergraduate students than women on campus 15 to 1. However, this was the first time she had met other women with an interest in engineering and technology. and she quickly found a home in the department of metallurgy (now materials science and engineering). Four decades later, Gregg made a career in the design of clean rooms and laboratories for semiconductor manufacturing and research around the world.

At MIT, Gregg was interested in semiconductors. For her dissertation, she and co-workers sent semiconductor crystals into space on NASA’s Skylab to test the theory that gravity causes the crystals to grow unevenly, which they predict will lead to circuit defects as the chips become more complex. “We brought the crystals back to Earth and measured them, and of course they were completely homogeneous,” she recalls; Meanwhile, those whom they raised on Earth “had all these heterogeneities.” Gregg would later return to this work as a “thought experiment” for an aerospace company studying the manufacture of devices in space.

After MIT, Gregg worked at Fairchild Semiconductor to improve manufacturing. In conversations with workers, “I became interested in the built environment and in human factor and yield optimization,” she says.

Gregg began designing semiconductor factories after working for about 10 years as a startup junkie in various companies before founding Abbie Gregg, Inc. was purchased in 2019. from AM Technical Solutions (where Gregg is now Chief Technology Officer). She strives to create safe, functional and aesthetic spaces with lots of windows and natural light. “People don’t put windows in clean rooms because they say, ‘We don’t want to look at the industrial scene,’ says Gregg. “But if a clean room does not look beautiful, then something is wrong with it; it is poorly planned or not maintained. “

One of Gregg’s favorite projects took her back to where she started: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She performed the initial planning and design of clean rooms and laboratories at MIT.nano, MIT’s new home for nanotechnology research. Shortly after it opened, she visited the campus for the 45th meeting in 2019. “I stopped and watched the new graduates peek into this building and show their parents,” she recalls. “It was the most amazing feeling. This is my legacy. ”