Katrien Marent
External Commications Director

Katrien Marent has an engineering degree in microelectronics. She joined imec in 1992 as analog designer and specialized in design of low-noise readout electronics for high-energy physics. In 1999, she became scientific editor at imec’s business development division and was responsible for authoring and editing the research organization’s numerous company technical documents and publications. In 2001, she became corporate communications director at imec. Since August 2007, she holds the position of external communications director including corporate, marketing and outreach communications.

Luc Van den Hove
President and CEO

Luc Van den hove was till June 30, 2009 Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at imec (Leuven, Belgium). He became Chief Executive Officer (CEO) on July 1, 2009. He joined imec in 1984, starting his research career in the field of silicide and interconnect technologies. In 1988, he became manager of IMEC’s micro-patterning group (lithography, dry etching); in 1996, Department Director of Unit Process Step R&D; and in 1998, Vice-President of the Silicon Process and Device Technology Division. In January 2007, he was appointed as imec's EVP & COO. Luc Van den hove received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Leuven, Belgium. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications and conference contributions.

Jef Poortmans
Department director solar and organic technologies

Dr. Jozef Poortmans received his degree in electronic engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit of Leuven, Belgium, in 1985. He joined the newly build Interuniversitary Micro-electronic Centre (IMEC) in Leuven where he worked on laser recrystallization of polysilicon and a-Si for SOI-applications and thin-film transistors. In 1988 he started his Ph. D study on strained SiGe-layers. Both the deposition and the use of these SiGe-alloys within the base of a heterojunction bipolar transistor were investigated in the frame of this study. He received his Ph. D. degree in June 1993. Afterwards he joined the photovoltaics group, where he became responsible for the group Advanced Solar Cells. Within this frame he started up the activity about thin-film crystalline Si solar cells at imec and he has been coordinating several European Projects in this domain during the 4th and 5th European Framework Program. In 2003, he became cluster coordinator of European Projects in the latter domain. In 1998 he initiated the activity on organic solar cells at IMEC which was complemented with an activity on III-V solar cells started in 2000. At the moment he is Programme Director of the Strategic Programme SOLAR+ at imec. This Program comprises all the photovoltaic technology development activities within imec.
Dr. Poortmans has authored or co-authored nearly 350 papers that have been published in Conference Proceedings and technical journals. He has written 4 book articles, two of which are dealing with the properties and applications of strained SiGe-alloys whereas the other two are in the field of photovoltaics. He is Scientific Editor of a Book on thin-film solar cells and has been acting as co-organizer of several thin-film solar cell symposia in the frame of the E-MRS. As a Board Member of EUREC agency he is involved in the preparation of the Strategic Research Agenda for Photovoltaic Solar Energy Technology of the European PV Technology Platform. He was General Chairman of the 21st European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference & Exhibition.

Serge Biesemans
Vice president process technology

Serge Biesemans has obtained his PhD at IMEC in 1998 in the field of scaling CMOS devices to the sub 100nm regime. That same year he joined the IBM Microelectronics division in East Fishkill, NY. In 2002, he joined the IBM 300mm manufacturing organization. In 2003, he returned to IMEC as director of the CMOS Technology R&D group responsible for the integration of emerging technologies for the 45/32/22/16nm nodes in both logic, SRAM, DRAM and NVM. In 2007, he also took a responsibility in the integration of MEMS and photonics.

Bert Gyselinckx
General manager Holst Centre/imec, and program director
HUMAN++ 

Bert Gyselinckx combines his role as HUMAN++ program director with that of general manager of imec at the Holst Centre. Bert was instrumental in defining the technical strategy of the Holst Centre at its creation in 2005. He brought to the Holst Centre his program management experience and know how in wireless research from imec. Bert is well known in the scientific community for his pioneering contributions to wireless OFDM communications leading to our current generation of WiFi modems. Bert lives by the golden rule “working hard, playing hard”. In 2001, he replaced his office chair for a bike saddle and went on a 12 month odyssey in the Asia Pacific region. 15000km later, he was inspired to create technologies that can have a true impact on society. Together with some like minded colleagues, he established the HUMAN++ program within imec. This program develops disruptive technologies for health and comfort monitoring. As one of the exponents of the HUMAN++ program, Bert became known as a thought leader in body area networks. Bert received the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Rijksuniversiteit Gent, Belgium, in 1992 and the the M.S. degree in Air and Space Electronics from the Ecole Nationale Superieure de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace, Toulouse, France, in 1993. At this time, he was also a trainee at the Research and Development group of Siemens in Munich, Germany.

Wolfgang Eberle
Manager bioelectronic systems group - Program manager cell Interfacing technology

Wolfgang Eberle is R&D manager of the Bioelectronic Systems Group and program manager Cell interfacing technology at imec since 2009. He has been senior scientist and project manager for the same group from mid 2006, ramping up the research on in vivo neuroelectronics and electronic microsystems for in vitro neuroscience. He joined imec in 1997 working in various positions before. Dr. Eberle obtained the Dipl.-Ing. (M.Sc.) degree in electrical engineering from Saarland University, Germany, in 1996 with majors in RF engineering, telecommunication networks, and biology and project work in wireless body area networks and transcutaneous implant communications and energy transfer. He obtained the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven with a dissertation on mixed analog/digital exploration and design for wireless broadband transceivers. He joined imec in 1997. He as author or co-author of more than 50 scientific publications and 10 patents. He as a IEEE senior member and a member of VDE/DGBMT. Since 1994, he has been working directly or as a consultant for a German biomedical start-up (Cardiomed), Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering (IBMT), and a US/Belgian start-up (Resonext Communications/RFMD).

Liesbet Van der Perre
Director green radio program line

Liesbet Van der Perre received the M.Sc. degree and the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering specializing in wireless communication from the K.U.Leuven, Belgium, in 1992 and 1997 respectively. She joined IMEC in 1997, taking responsibilities as a system architect, project leader, and program manager. Currently, she is director of the Green Radio programs in imec. She’s an author and co-author of over 200 scientific publications. Also, she is a part-time Professor at the K.U.Leuven.

Francesco Pessolano
Manager NVision program

Dr. Pessolano has more than a decade of experience in multimedia systems mostly at Philips and its spun-out Semiconductors division in a leading role for activities in SoC design for multimedia systems, 3D display systems, smart cameras, security systems. He is currently responsible for all activities in Vision Systems at IMEC, one of the world's largest research institutes. Dr. Pessolano holds a BSc/MSc in Electrical Engineering from University of Pisa and a PhD in Computer Science from London South Bank University. He is author and co-author of more than 30 peer-reviews papers and he has been awarded 13 patents.

Kurt Ronse 
Director advanced lithography program

Kurt Ronse received both Master of Science and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Leuven (Belgium). He joined the lithography group in IMEC in 1990, specializing in the field of phase shifting masks, off-axis illumination techniques and CD control optimization.
He has authored and co-authored numerous publications and is a frequent conference speaker, often times presenting invited and plenary papers, in the field of optical lithography (I-line, deep-UV, 193nm, 193nm immersion) and EUVL.
Currently Dr. Ronse holds the position of lithography department director at imec, where he is responsible for the Advanced Lithography Program covering 193nm immersion, double patterning and EUV lithography. Dr. Ronse is a member of SPIE.

Thomas Y. Hoffman
Director logic DRAM front-end-of-line program

Thomas Hoffmann received a Ph.D. degree from Lille University, France, in 2000. He then joined Intel Corporation's R&D group in Hillsboro, Oregon, as a TCAD engineer for sub-90nm technologies. In 2004, he moved to Intel's technology development group as a device engineer for 45nm process development.
In 2005, he joined imec in Leuven, Belgium, to lead the electrical characterization group for advanced silicon technologies. In 2009, he became director of the FEOL Logic & DRAM devices research program.
He has authored or co-authored approximately 50 technical papers for publication in journals and presentations at conferences.

Rudi Cartuyvels
Vice president process technology

Julien Penders is Program Manager at the Holst Centre / IMEC, where he leads the activities on Body Area Networks. He is responsible for the integration of technology research achievements into prototypes of wireless health monitors, development of embedded algorithms, and deployment of integrated prototypes for use in healthcare, sports and lifestyle. He has (co-) authored over 15 papers in the field of body area networks and autonomous wireless sensor networks, and is the author of one book chapter on the topic. He serves as a reviewer for the IEEE EMBS community. Julien holds a M.Sc. degree in Systems Engineering from University of Liege, Belgium (2004), and a M.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University, MA (2006). He was a 2004/2005 fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation.

Diederik Verkest
Scientific director of the digital components group

Diederik VERKEST received the Ph.D. degree in Applied Sciences from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) in 1994. He has been working in the VLSI design methodology group of the IMEC laboratory (Leuven, Belgium) on several topics related to formal methods, system design, hardware/software co-design, re-configurable systems, and multi-processor system-on-chips in the domain of wireless and multimedia systems. He is currently scientific director of the digital components group of imec's smart systems unit and is program director of the INSITE program focusing on co-exploration of design and technology. Diederik Verkest is Professor at the University of Brussels (VUB) and at the University of Leuven (KU-Leuven). He is member of IEEE and a Golden Core Member of the IEEE Computer Society. Diederik Verkest published and presented over 100 articles in International Journals and at International Conferences. Over the past years he was a member of the programme and/or organisation committees of several major international conferences such as ISSS, CODES, FPL, DATE, and DAC. He was the General Chair of the Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference, DATE'03.