For the first time in its 70-year history, the annual IEEE Electronic, Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) could not be held in-person due to the Coronavirus pandemic.  With the generous support of the sponsoring organizations, IEEE and its Electronics Packaging Society (EPS), and our corporate sponsors the in-person event was transformed into a free-to-attend on-demand virtual conference.  The program included over 400 presentations organized into 45 technical sessions and 7 special invited sessions.  The virtual conference opened on June 3, 2020 and was originally planned to close on June 30, 2020, however, due to high demand, the conference was extended one week and closed on July 7, 2020.  In conclusion, 7,704 individuals from 55 countries registered for the conference and those folks watched over 28,000 hours of streamed content.  For comparison, the record in-person ECTC had 1,738 attendees.

The 45 technical sessions averaged just over 450 attendees.  Table 1 shows the top ten most attended sessions.  Fan-out and wafer-level packaging, and 3D and heterogeneous integration all remain important topics for the industry.  Application specific sessions on 5G, power and automotive were also well attended. 

Table 1. Top ten most attended technical sessions at the 70^th ECTC.

The top highlight of the conference was the fantastic keynote lecture from Dr. Douglas Yu of TSMC titled “Innovative Heterogeneous Integration Technologies Initiate a New Era.”  Almost 2,000 people watched Dr. Yu’s presentation. Other highlights from the conference were the special sessions filled with invited expert speakers from around the world. Over 1,000 people watched the special session “3DIC: Past, Present and Future” that was chaired by Michael Mayer, University of Toronto, and featured presentations from the 2020 recipients of the IEEE Electronics Packaging Award, Peter Ramm, Fraunhofer EMFT, and  Mitsumasa Koyanagi, Tohoku University.  The special session attendance is shown in Table 2, and shows strong interest in photonics, heterogeneous integration, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

Table 2. Special session attendance at the 70^th ECTC.

It takes a lot of individuals and effort to organize ECTC each year, and we would like to thank the over 250 technical experts who volunteer on the program committee. We would also like to thank the authors who submit and present your work at ECTC.  Your work makes ECTC possible, and we strive to make sure that ECTC is a premier venue to showcase your results.  This year, we send a special thank you to the IEEE Event Emergency Response Team and the IEEE Meetings, Conferences and Events (MCE) group for helping us navigate both the cancellation of the in-person event and the creation of the virtual event.

With the support of our sponsoring organization, the IEEE EPS, and with the generous support from our corporate sponsors we were able to offer this year’s conference at no cost.  We are happy to report that this format allowed many individuals from around the globe the opportunity to experience ECTC.  We hope that everyone who attended benefited from the content, and we hope that you all will be excited to participate in future ECTCs.  The planning for next year’s 71^st ECTC is underway and the conference is scheduled for June 1-4, 2021, at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina in San Diego, CA. We are anticipating that it will be an in-person event; however, we are also developing contingency plans for a hybrid or virtual conference based on the pandemic factors. The first call-for-papers has been issued, the abstract submission process will open on August 15, 2020 and abstracts must be received by October 4, 2020. For more information visit www.ectc.net.

Source: https://ectc.net/