BERLIN, Feb. 16, 2021 — The Catholic University of Leuven, Technical University of Dresden and CEA-Leti have won the 2019 European SEMI Award at the SEMI Technology Unites Global Summit for their pivotal contributions in the fields of telecommunications and nanotechnology. The award winners’ pioneering research and collaboration with academia and industry led to major advances in semiconductor technologies and their market adoption.

The European SEMI Award, established 32 years ago, recognizes key players in the global manufacturing supply chain for their leadership excellence and strategic contributions that help drive critical advances in the microelectronics industry.

2019 SEMI European Award Winners

• Willy Sansen, Professor in Engineering Science at the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) and Gerhard Fettweis, Professor in Communications Engineering and Vodafone Chair at the Technical University of Dresden (TU Dresden), made outstanding research contributions in analog design and digital design techniques for a wide variety of applications.
• Jean-Frédéric Clerc, Vice President, Technological Research Division of CEA-Leti, Grenoble-based French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, received the European SEMI Special Service Award 2019 for outstanding research in nanotechnologies and contributions to the European semiconductor community throughout his career. With hundreds of patents to his name, Clerc drove research that led to innovations in liquid crystal flat screens and microsystems and is contributing to the development of biochips.

Winner Profiles

Willy Sansen, the Catholic University of Leuven

Since 1980 Sansen has served as full professor at the KU Leuven, where he has headed the ESAT-MICAS laboratory on analog design since 1984.

He has supervised 63 Ph.D. theses and authored or coauthored more than 635 publications and 16 books. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, was program chair of the ISSCC-2002 conference and is a Past-President of IEEE Solid-State Circuits.

Gerhard Fettweis, the Technische Universität Dresden, and Barkhausen Institut

Fettweis has coordinated the Cluster of Excellence Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) Highly Adaptive Energy Efficient Computing (HAEC) for the TU Dresden since 2012. He founded the 5G Lab Germany in 2014, and among 12 startups Systemonic AG in 1999 and Signalion in 2003.

Jean-Frédéric Clerc, CEA-Leti

Clerc was as an engineer at CEA-Leti from 1977 to 1984 and later became group leader at CEA-Leti. He worked as Research and Process Development Manager at Pixtech, a CEA-Leti startup, and served as CEA-Leti deputy Director at CEA-Leti and as Deputy Director of Division of Technological Research head of Division for Strategy and Programs.

Prior European SEMI Award recipients hailed from companies including STMicroelectronics, EV Group, Infineon, imec, Semilab, Deutsche Solar and the Fraunhofer Institute.

See the list of past SEMI European Award recipients. Nominations for the 2020 contributions are now open. To participate, please check the award guidelines online.

About SEMI

SEMI connects more than 2,400 member companies and 1.3 million professionals worldwide to advance the technology and business of electronics design and manufacturing. SEMI members are responsible for the innovations in materials, design, equipment, software, devices, and services that enable smarter, faster, more powerful, and more affordable electronic products. Electronic System Design Alliance (ESD Alliance), FlexTech, the Fab Owners Alliance (FOA) and the MEMS & Sensors Industry Group (MSIG) are SEMI Strategic Technology Communities, defined communities within SEMI focused on specific technologies. Visit www.semi.org to learn more.

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Source: SEMI