Hot topics in IC and electronic system testing – from all angles

In its first 25 years, the IEEE European Test Symposium has set up its camps in almost every European country at least once. For example, the Netherlands has hosted it twice: in Maastricht in 2003 by Erik Jan Marinissen (at that time working at Philips Research) and in Amsterdam in 2016 by professor Said Hamdioui of Delft University of Technology. Belgium, on the other hand, was still one of the very few blank spots for ETS on the European map. When a team from Imec and KU Leuven in 2019 proposed to the ETS Steering Committee to host the 2021 edition in the historic city of Bruges, their bid was quickly accepted.

Then, in early 2020, the Covid-19 virus outbreak struck and forced ETS-2020, originally planned to take place in Estonia’s capital Tallinn, to move to an online conference format. Although at that time, many were convinced that we would be freed from the pandemic and its restrictions on our daily lives well before May 2021, the Belgian organizers of ETS-2021 soon realized that there was no guarantee for a Covid-19-free world when their event would take place.