Preface October 2019

"Just like last month, I can announce a new addition to our management team: Ilan Spillinger from Microsoft."

Over the past year, we have worked hard to attract top talent and to establish a strong management team in order to consolidate and strengthen our leading position in the research world. In the September issue of imec magazine, I referred to Sri Samavedam as our new Senior Vice President CMOS Technologies and to Jan Rabaey as CTO system technology co-optimization.

This month we welcome another exceptional talent: Ilan Spillinger. Ilan has built an impressive career at Intel, IBM and Microsoft. At Microsoft he was Corporate VP HoloLens and Silicon and he led the HoloLens Hardware engineering team, and the silicon & sensor development team for HoloLens and Xbox. At imec, he will become Executive Vice President and Corporate CTO and will be a very strong driver for the future R&D strategy of imec.

Attracting talent is important at all levels and we are constantly looking for new initiatives to win the War-For-Talent. For example, I am also very proud of the eight entrants who started in the imec school on 1 September. They will be trained as cleanroom technicians for one year and will then support our researchers by carrying out the practical work in the cleanroom and keeping the equipment up and running. It is thanks to this team that we can present top results at conferences and with our industrial partners.

In this issue of imec magazine you can also read about another new initiative that we created to ensure the influx of talent: the Tenure Track.

Particularly known from American universities, the Tenure Track allows researchers to set up their own lab and work on a subject of their choice (in line with the imec mission). For imec, this is the ideal way to add new ideas to the research portfolio. A strong basis of explorative ideas is essential to be able to develop an innovative roadmap for the future.

But of course, we also have a lot of top talent on board. Evidence of this can be found in the six researchers who have won the prestigious ERC Grant in recent years. You can read about two of these ERC grants in this and the next issue of imec magazine. This month it is Liesbet Lagae's turn: she is developing a cell sorter chip and, in a proof-of-concept side project of her ERC research, she tested this chip for cell therapy applications.

In addition to articles on the Tenure Track and the cell sorter chip, this issue of imec magazine also features a new spin-off that wants to bring broadband to every living room, in a wireless manner; a unique memory cell for 3D-NAND memories; a strategy for dealing with solar panel waste in 2050; and the innovative material development for a new generation of solar cells at IMO-IMOMEC, an imec lab on the UHasselt.

Enjoy reading!

Luc Van den hove,

President and CEO imec