Last Tuesday, over 300 guests gathered at the Scandic Hotel at Potsdamer Platz for a Fraunhofer IZM symposium on the latest trends in research and industry. Afterwards, a special reception was held in honor of Klaus-Dieter Lang’s 60^th birthday, with speeches by high-profile names from politics and the microelectronics field.

The symposium was kicked off by ex-Fraunhofer IZM Department Head Prof. Wolfgang Scheel, who interwove the history of PCB technology with that of the institute and its director,  a thread that was continued by PCB-NETWORK’s Hans Friedrichkeit. International packaging expert and previous Fraunhofer IZM Institute Director Prof. Herbert Reichl then turned the audience’s attention to the future with role of packaging in the tomorrow’s Internet of Things.

Dr. Gerd Teepe, who heads “Design Enablement” at Dresden’s GLOBALFOUNDARIES, highlighted the importance of investment into education and training with thought-provoking statistics about microelectronic development’s social and economic impact. Bundesdruckerei’s Dr. Dirk Woywod addressed the importance of application-oriented research and development, emphasizing what all speakers agreed on, namely, that packaging has a big future and realizing this future will require a lot of work.  The part Fraunhofer IZM will play in this future was discussed by closing speaker and Deputy Institute Director Rolf Aschenbrenner, who gave dual integration technology on panel and wafer level particular mention.

After the symposium, Fraunhofer IZM Institute Director Prof. Klaus-Dieter Lang’s 60^th birthday was celebrated, starting with a series of speeches by dignitaries from politics and research, including from the Berlin Senate Department for Education, Youth and Science, the German ministry for education and research (BMBF), the TU Berlin and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft.  A special part of the evening was the awarding of the Fraunhofer Medal, one of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft’s highest honors, to Prof. Klaus-Dieter Lang. The event at the Scandic Hotel also made room for other Fraunhofer IZM stars — Dr.-Ing. Tanja Braun was presented with the Fraunhofer IZM Research Award for her contribution to the characterization, processing and reliability evaluation of microelectronic encapsulation materials. The celebration closed with a reception at the historic Wasserwerk Berlin.