The Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Administration, José Luis Escrivá, announced this week in his appearance at the Commission for Economy, Trade and Digital Transformation that Malaga will host the new research and development (R&D) centre that the IMEC – Inter-University Microelectronics Centre – will set up in Spain.
Innova IRV welcomes this announcement, which is an important boost to the activity that the Foundation has been developing over the last two years for the creation of a microelectronics ecosystem in Spain, and more specifically in Malaga.
Contacts with IMEC were initiated in 2022 by Mario Nemirovsky, CTO of microelectronics at the Fundación Instituto Ricardo Valle de Innovación (Innova IRV), and from that moment the possibility of setting up this centre in Malaga was suggested.
With the impetus of the president of the Foundation and CEO of the Premo Group, Ezequiel Navarro, and the executive committee of INNOVA IRV, the fundamental support of the University of Malaga, the City Council and Malaga Tech Park was coordinated, to subsequently give way to a series of negotiations by the central government and the Junta de Andalucía, which has led to the agreement reached to make possible the implementation of IMEC in Malaga.
¿Qué es el IMEC?
Founded in 1984 in Belgium, IMEC is the world’s leading institute for semiconductor research and development and has around 5,000 researchers from 95 countries and around 600 industrial partners, including the sector’s major international companies. The Malaga site would be the second location of this centre in Europe, which currently only has one in Leuven (Belgium).
Unlike manufacturers, it does not compete, but does research with funds from all companies in the sector and makes the knowledge generated available to them.