• CHIPNATION, the National Congress of the Semiconductor Industry, gathered yesterday more than 200 people in Getafe in its first edition.
• The event, which was attended by more than 50 speakers and relevant institutional participations, including the President of the Spanish Government and the Mayoress of Getafe, focused on presenting the needs and challenges of the Spanish semiconductor ecosystem.
CHIPNATION, the 1st National Congress of the Semiconductor Industry, took place yesterday in Getafe, being a great success in its first edition, with more than 400 registered participants, 200 of them attending in person.
The congress brought together leaders from academia, the business world and public institutions, who debated the main challenges facing the sector in Spain. In the words of Álvaro Pineda, president of AESEMI, “The semiconductor industry has never been so united. Proof of this is the attendance of representatives of companies from all over Spain, research centres, universities and sectoral associations and clusters”.
In this way, the ecosystem is gaining muscle ahead of the foreseeable PERTE CHIP calls in 2024, in which collaboration and the development of joint projects will be more than important. This was precisely another of the main messages launched during the congress, which called for facilities to collaborate between academia and industry and to establish complex collaborations with a multitude of private agents.
During the congress, other issues of special relevance that AESEMI, the Sector Employers’ Association, hopes to work on with the administrations in the short term were discussed, such as the lack of specialised investment funds for the sector, the inclusion of regional clusters as driving agents of the local fabric, or the strategy to be taken by PERTE CHIP towards the future.
The congress was developed through five round tables and four presentations in which participated among others responsible for the Ministry of Industry, Real Instituto Elcano, SEMyS, or ICEX, along with representatives of Spanish companies participating in the IPCEI of Microelectronics, entities such as IMEC or TSMC, or associations such as DigitalES, or SERNAUTO.
The opening was in charge of Sara Hernández, Mayoress of Getafe; Ana Cremades, General Director of Research and Technological Innovation of the Community of Madrid; Álvaro Pineda, President of AESEMI and Avelino Brito, General Director of the Spanish Association for Quality. The institutional closure was made by the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, through a video intervention in which he expressed the total commitment of the new executive with the sector in Spain.
The first edition of CHIPNATION has been organised by the Spanish Semiconductor Industry Association (AESEMI), in collaboration with the Getafe City Council, and the Technological Innovation and Talent Cluster (CITT) in semiconductors, with the strategic collaboration of the Spanish Association for Quality (AEC), and AESEMI is already working on the second edition of the Congress, which is expected to continue the excellent line that the first one has left.
