Historical Edition of the Main Microelectronics Congress in Europe

The ESSCIRC/ESSDERC congress was held in Lisbon from September 11 to 14. which has been jointly organized by researchers from the UNINOVA Institute & NOVA School of Science (Lisbon), ST Microelectronics and the Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, a joint center of the Universidad de Sevilla and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.

The ESSCIRC/ESSDERC congress (https://www.esscirc-essderc2023.org) was held in Lisbon from September 11 to 14, which was jointly organized by researchers from the UNINOVA Institute & NOVA School of Science (Lisbon), ST Microelectronics and the Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, a joint center of the Universidad de Sevilla and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (https://www.esscirc-essderc2023.org/committes). This event is the most important scientific-technical forum in the field of microelectronics, being the main European conference of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society and IEEE Electron Devices Society. This year's edition has had a record participation of more than 900 attendees from the main academic institutions and companies in the semiconductor sector, not only at European but global level.

This is also a historic year for the ESSCIRC congress because it marks 20 years since the first time it was organized in Portugal (Estoril) and 30 years since the first edition in Seville, organized by a group of professors and researchers from the then incipient Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla (IMSE). The 1993 edition was chaired by Prof. José Luis Huertas Díaz, professor in the Electronics Area at the US and founder of the IMSE. This event has only been held twice in Spain, both in Seville. The second edition took place almost twenty years after the first, in 2010, and on this occasion it was chaired by Prof. Ángel Rodríguez Vázquez, also a professor in the Electronics Area at the US and a researcher and founding member of the IMSE, and promoter of the creation of the company Anafocus Ltd (today Teledyne Anafocus), of which he was its first CEO.

The Iberian edition of Lisbon in 2023 has been held at a very important moment in the history of the microelectronics industry in Europe, with financing programs such as the EU Chip Act at the European level, or the PERTE-Chip in Spain, which aim promote this key sector for the economy and society. For this reason, the organizing committee of this edition, chaired by Prof. João Goes (Professor at UNINOVA, Portugal), Dr. Andreia Cathelin (Director of Advanced R&D Design at ST Microelectronics) and Prof. José M. de la Rosa (Professor of the Electronics Area at the US and researcher at IMSE), invited various personalities from the European academic, business and political world to participate in a round table to debate the actions that are being carried out in Europe in general and some countries, particularly Portugal and Spain, to attract and train talent in a driving sector of the economy and modern society such as microelectronics. This event was attended by the Spanish side with the PERTE-Chip Commissioner, Mr. Jaime Martorell, and with Dr. Javier Calpe-Maravilla, head of the Valencia development center of the company Analog Devices Inc.

The event also included a well-deserved tribute to the professor of the Universidad de Sevilla and first director of the IMSE, José Luis Huertas Díaz, in which the dean of the Faculty of Physics, Prof. Antonio Acosta, represented the US.

The US has decidedly opted to play a fundamental role in the PERTE Chip based on its strategic proposal for the USECHIP Chair, in the recent call for PERTE Chip Chairs.