News

Silicon Europe Cluster Forum: Silicon Europe Alliance rolls out new roadmap

The Silicon Alliance Cluster Forum is a twice-yearly meeting of the European clusters that make up the Silicon Europe Alliance. The most recent Forum was held on May 24, 2018 in Graz, Austria, hosted by the Silicon Alps cluster.

The member clusters confirmed their commitment to the Alliance’s main objectives:

  • Facilitate introductions between members of the clusters’ respective ecosystems to generate business and R&D opportunities
  • Represent a broad range of European microelectronics and digital technology stakeholders internationally and, especially, in Taiwan and the eastern US
  • Support SMEs in their efforts to penetrate European markets and to access EU-funded R&D projects

The Forum also gave member clusters a chance to determine joint initiatives for the latter part of 2018, with busy calendar of international events:

  • Joint exhibit booth at Silicon Europe @ SEMICON Taiwan – September 5–7, Taipei , Taiwan
  • Cocktail/networking reception to be attended by a delegation from the US (Upstate New York) on November 12, 2018 during the Electronica/SEMICON Europe trade show in Munich
  • A webinar series on “Advanced electronics and their applications” in partnership with FuzeHub, the New York State economic development agency
  • An Open Innovation Day at the end of the year in conjunction with a major medtech corporation (organization TBD)
  • A technical seminar on the Digital Electronics Design training course planned for October-November, 2018 (organization TBD)

Finally, the members confirmed the Alliance’s roadmap going forward. The clusters in the Alliance plan to leverage recent successes like the European Open Innovation Day organized with Thales and a new European intercluster project (IoT4Industry) to continue to connect their ecosystems and raise the Alliance’s profile among European, national, and regional institutions.

The Alliance will also work on the European Commission’s Digital Innovation Hubs, EU cluster policy, interregional cooperation, and relationships with stakeholders outside of Europe (Taiwan, US, China).

The next Silicon Alliance Cluster Forum will take place on November 27, 2018 in Bilbao, Spain during Basque Industry Days. The Forum will be hosted by GAIA, a cluster in Spain’s Basque Country.

About Silicon Europe

The Silicon Europe Alliance was established in 2015 to bring twelve European digital technology clusters together to work toward the shared objective of strengthening Europe’s digital technology and microelectronics industries by facilitating relationships between the 2,000 members of their world-class ecosystems.

In December 2017, Isabelle Guillaume was succeeded by Frank Bösenberg, CEO, Silicon Saxony, Germany, as Chair of the Alliance.

The Alliance’s twelve European member clusters in 2018: Silicon Saxony (Germany), Minalogic (France/Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes), High-Tech NL and BCS NL (the Netherlands), DSP Valley (Belgium), Silicon Alps (Austria), NMI (United Kingdom), MIDAS (Ireland), SCS (France/Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur), GAIA (Spain), Fondation Distretto Green and Hi-Tech of Monza Brianza (Italy), and Cluster MESAP (Italy)