With the EU Chips Act the European Union will create together with the member states incentives to (1) increase the semiconductor production capacity, (2) provide funds to stimulate technology leadership, and (3) take measures to make the chip supply chains more robust. The talk will give the political context, point out opportunities for stakeholders/innovators and put photonic integrated circuits (PICs) into the perspective.
Dr. Werner Steinhögl is Head of Sector in the Microelectronics and Photonics Industry unit of the European Commission in Brussels. He has been serving in the Communications Networks, Content and Technology (CONNECT) directorate general since 2005 in different positions. He has managed R&I support programs spanning from emerging quantum computing technologies over nano- technologies to safety-critical computing and cyber-physical systems. Since 2018 he has been in charge of the photonics public private partnership for research and contributed to the EU Chips Act. Since 2022 he deals also with international collaboration in the semiconductor area. Before joining the European Commission he had worked as team leader for 6 years in the semiconductor industry at Infineon and Siemens in Munich, held various positions in corporate research and collaborated with R&D teams in the US. He holds a PhD in solid state physics acquired at the Max-Planck Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Göttingen, Germany, in 1998.