imec, a world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies

What are the key figures of R&D at imec? Imec brings together more than 4,000 people from over 97 nationalities. Imec is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium and has distributed R&D groups at a number of Flemish universities, in the Netherlands, Taiwan and the USA, and offices in China, India and Japan. In 2018, imec’s revenue (P&L) totaled 583 million euro. Further information on imec can be found at www.imec-int.com.

Could you introduce your expertise in microchip technology and particularly in software and ICT? Imec is a world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. The combination of our widely acclaimed leadership in microchip technology and profound software and ICT expertise is what makes us unique. By leveraging our world-class infrastructure and local and global ecosystem of partners across a multitude of industries, we create groundbreaking innovation in application domains such as healthcare, smart cities and mobility, logistics and manufacturing, energy and education.

Could you present your offer in the field of R&D and innovation services? We offer you R&D solutions to create new technologies as well as innovation services applicable to both products and services. We firmly believe in the synergy of R&D collaboration. Together with universities, companies and governments we aim to maximize our knowledge and push technology forward. In our industrial affiliation programs in precompetitive research companies share expertise and research among partners across the value chain, lowering risks and costs for everyone involved. All partners benefit from the unique assets that imec offers, including state-of-the-art infrastructure, top-of-the-class talent from around the globe with a mulitdisciplinary scientific background, and a one-of-a-kind ecosystem of local and global partners including universities and companies across the value chain and from a multitude of industries. This ensures more interactions, higher creativity and better integrated technologies.

Next to our industrial affiliation programs, we also offer bilateral collaborations for private research, and we help you with the development of technological solutions applicable to products and services, offering our expertise throughout the entire lifecycle of the innovation process. Whether it is hardware, software, or both. We offer specialized support programs for innovators from around the world, and for local initiatives in Flanders specifically.

Could you tell us about smart health research at imec? Imec leverages its expertise in chip design and chip technology, MEMS, bio-electronics, sensors, photonics, microfluidics, etc. to develop innovative tools for the life sciences, pharma R&D, clinical diagnostics, therapeutic and surgery, biopharma production and analytical biochemistry industries. We are your ideal development and manufacturing partner for your custom smart biochip solutions.

Moreover, imec combines electronics and data science expertise to develop and validate wearable solutions for our customers’ health applications.We develop solutions for a variety of wearable health applications, focusing on medical devices and chronic disease management, as well as on lifestyle and preventive care. Examples are a prototype of a wearable 5-channel ECG chip to monitor fetal heart rate and mobility, developed together with the start-up Bloomlife, a smart radar system for gesture recognition and noncontact vital signs monitoring, a unique hybrid cloud platform for fast and cost-efficient whole genome sequencing that makes clinical genomics affordable for daily use in hospital, developed in a collaborative project together with UZ Leuven, KU Leuven, the Ghent University, Agilent, Western Digital and BlueBee… © imec

What do you see as the main challenges facing life sciences companies in the coming years? New techniques to monitor the human body even down to a molecular level are poised to play a crucial role in the future. These new techniques have increasing demands on new tests that will be have to be more sensitive, faster and cheaper so that we can test and treat all patients whenever there is a need. And this without overstretching the already heavily challenged healthcare budgets. Size, cost, power consumption, performance, sensitivity, within each patient’s reach and with a high speed for results, become crucial parameters in research and diagnostics.

As a pioneer in nanoelectronics, imec is bringing the power of chip technology to the world of healthcare to develop innovative tools for diagnostics, sequencing, cell & gene therapy, neurotech, implantable medical devices, medical imaging and more. With silicon process technology, we now have the ability to design and fabricate breakthrough miniaturized tools and instruments that will enable a better healthcare diagnosis and treatment for everyone. Moreover, as an R&D hub, imec can support companies from innovative idea creation until market entry, including the prototyping and validation of innovative products, thus decreasing the risk of launching new products into the market.