It has been an exceptional year. The COVID-19 pandemic is shaking up our lives much more and much longer than we all expected. Despite the stressful and difficult times for all of us, we look back at 2020 with phenomenal results for imec. 

We present them here in support of our strong belief that we have to look to the positive changes that can emerge from what was a challenging year. They inspire us to remain at the forefront of innovation and to enable a post-COVID life and work that will no doubt be different from what we were used to. 

One with even more emphasis on non-technological aspects such as sustainability, physical and mental wellbeing, solidarity and social awareness; priorities that became much more visible during the ongoing crisis. 

And even if they are non-technical by nature, technological developments play a crucial role in supporting and enabling them. 

Inspired by the achievements of 2020, imec thanks everyone who has been instrumental in making them happen and wish all of you a bright 2021, with our lives more balanced again and with plenty of opportunities to innovate together for a better future.

Our 2020-highlight categories:

• Successfully dealing with the pandemic: technology contributions.
• Successfully dealing with the pandemic: operational adaptation.
• World premieres coming out of the cleanrooms.
• Collaborations with partners.
• Pushing semiconductor functional scaling.
• Connecting semiconductor technology to application grand challenges.
• International recognition.
• Spin-offs and venturing support.
• The CEO’s vision.

imec would not be imec if its state-of-the-art technology portfolio didn’t contribute to tackling the global pandemic. Most visible was probably the announcement of developing a SARS-CoV-2 test to identify positive cases and confirm whether someone is contagious in less than five minutes. 

The groundbreaking approach will use virus particles in exhaled breath for quick, easy, comfortable, large-scale point-of-care testing. Imec is teaming up with the UZ Leuven University Hospital for the solution’s clinical validation and with Brussels Airport for functional prototype testing.

But also indirectly, imec technology is contributing to dealing with the pandemic and its consequences. For example, thanks to its collaboration with Lopos, a spin-off of imec and the Ghent University, presenting the SafeDistance wearable that helps employees follow social distancing guidelines through an audible or haptic alarm. 

The wearable solution guarantees privacy by measuring distance without logging or storing data. On a related topic, imec also collaborated with Romware for the development of its wearable worker safety device. Their solution ensures worker safety in industrial environments. Thanks to some minor adjustments, the Romware Covid Radius is now able to contribute to the prevention of corona infections in the workplace.

Not specifically developed because of the pandemic, but also worth mentioning in this context are imec’s activities on haptic feedback and on e-learning as well as the 2020 launch of a new spin-off called Crowdscan. 

As a spin-off from imec and the University of Antwerp, Crowdscan has developed a system that measures the density of a crowd in real-time using a wireless sensor network and without using camera images, mobile phone data or other privacy-sensitive information. 

When the COVID-19 crisis broke out, Crowdscan immediately realized the added value of the technology for helping society adapt to the new needs of social distancing. 

In May, a successful pilot project was launched to measure the size of groups on a bridge and a street near the MAS museum in Antwerp (Belgium). Today, Crowdscan technology is also monitoring crowd densities in cities such as Ghent (Belgium).

Another already ongoing activity that suddenly became more relevant, was the i-Learn program under the coordination of imec. It was launched by the Flemish Government in September 2019 to support personalized digital learning in Flemish education. 

When in March 2020 primary and secondary schools suddenly had to rely on online and remote learning, the i-Learn consortium rapidly launched a temporary online platform with freely available digital tools.

Last but not least, the COVID pandemic also put imec’s efforts on haptic feedback in an entirely new context. In this activity, imec uses micromachined transducers to turn ultrasound into a sense of touch. 

Already developed as the next step in smart interfacing, the benefits of “touchless” interfaces in a (post-)pandemic context has only made this research more relevant and urgent.