TITEL

Grand challenges: time to act

SPREKER

Gerard Beenker, Wetenschappelijk directeur, NXP

ABSTRACT

The semiconductors industry has proven to be very exciting for already several decades. In 40 years we have seen a million-fold increase in transistor density on a given integrated circuit area. This increase is the enabler for today’s electronics industry.

Various applications have been driving the semiconductors industry: computers, entertainment, communication, and their convergence. Moore’s law will certainly continue for a number of years, further increasing processor speed and memory density, among others.

Although this growth may continue for years, from technical perspective, it is about to reach its economical limits in many product areas: further scaling will become too expensive to be competitive.

At the same time the public attention is shifting from the unlimited features of electronic gadgets to addressing some pressing concerns in society: the so-called grand challenges: energy, environment, health care, security, privacy, mobility, food and water.

In the first report of the European Research Agenda Board it is stated that one third of public research should be geared to the grand societal challenges. A better alignment between knowledge institutes, small and medium enterprises and large companies is needed to address the problems in a multi-disciplinary way. In the current knowledge workers programs we have proven that this is very well possible.

With a number of examples we will show how electronics can play an essential role and how the grand challenges can be turned into new business opportunities for the semiconductors industry. 

BIOGRAFIE

Gerard Beenker joined Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven in 1980. Since 1989 he has had several management positions in the sector IC design of Philips Research Eindhoven. In 1999 he was appointed senior vice president of Philips Research. Until 2006 he has been responsible for the sector IC design in Philips Research, combined with his role as manager of the IC program and account manager for Philips Semiconductors.

In 2006 he established the NXP Research organisation and was appointed as manager. In November 2008 he became scientific director of NXP and manager of NXP External Relations. In this role he particularly focuses on developing and managing external relations with scientific, R&D community and public authorities, reflecting the growing importance of external partnerships for leveraging NXP’s R&D portfolio. In the fall of 2009 he was elected member of the Presidium of Artemisia. He is active in various advisory boards and councils, amongst others he is member of the Point-One Program Council in The Netherlands.