Rita Garrido Menacho

Dr. Garrido Menacho is a condensed matter physicist with specialties in semiconductor/superconductor nanofabrication, surface characterization, and electrical testing. At Exponent, she employs her experimental background to assist clients with failure analysis and safety design reviews of consumer products, automotive electronic systems, and energy storage systems. 

Dr. Garrido Menacho's work focuses on evaluating lithium-ion battery quality and design, battery pack protection circuitry, and overall product design safety through electrical, thermal, and mechanical testing. Dr. Garrido Menacho is experienced in performing root-cause failure analyses of field-returned units as well as assessing potential failure modes in new consumer products. Additionally, she has assisted in investigations involving automotive electronic system failures and recall-related matters.

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Garrido Menacho obtained her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her experimental research focused on designing, performing, and analyzing cryogenic temperature resistivity measurements of nanoscale superconductor-based devices. She studied collective quantum phenomena arising from strong electronic interactions in these systems. Through her experimental work, she gained significant experience in nanofabrication and surface characterization processes including e-beam lithography, photolithography, e-beam evaporation, thermal evaporation, reactive ion etching (RIE), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and profilometry. In addition, she has extensive knowledge of cryogenics and cryogenic systems as well as low-noise electrical transport (lock-in amplifier) techniques. Dr. Garrido Menacho also served as a mentor for undergraduate students under the University of Illinois Physics Department GPS program.