23 May 2014

The Université de Sherbrooke and IBM Canada have teamed up to establish a new research chair: the NSERC/IBM Canada Industrial Research Chair in Smarter Microelectronics Packaging for Performance Scaling.

This involves a unique business/university partnership, launched thanks to investments of $9.1M.

The Chair’s objective is to develop new industrial manufacturing processes and materials that increase the resistance and reliability of electronic components.

Three fields of endeavour

The NSERC/IBM Canada Industrial Research Chair in Smarter Microelectronics Packaging for Performance Scaling brings together three fields:

• Packaging-process innovations to integrate multiple 2D and 3D chips
• Housing designs to balance thermal, mechanical, and electrical performance
• Basic scientific advancement of packaging

David Danovitch, Julien Sylvestre, and Dominique Drouin, all professors in the Faculty of Engineering at the Université de Sherbrooke, are the holders of this Chair.

Several partners have contributed funds to the new Chair: the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC – $2.5M), IBM Canada ($2.5M + $2.6M in goods and services), the Université de Sherbrooke ($1.16M), and the Quebec university-industry consortium known as Prompt in the information-and-communications-technologies (ICT) industry ($340 000 for the first two years of operations).

Source: Université de Sherbrooke