NextFlex News – March 2023

Dear Members and Colleagues,

If you haven’t yet registered to attend our Winter Symposium on March 28 – 29 here at the Technology Hub in San Jose, please do so. It’s shaping up to be a fantastic event where we will launch our eighth project call. This part of the event is open to all and will provide a terrific overview of the prioritized set of manufacturing challenges from which we’ll be inviting proposals for technical solutions. The entire FHE community is invited to recommend, through “one-minute pitches,” ideas for projects with the intention of forming proposal teams. The remainder of the agenda is open to members only and includes a keynote by Dr. Frank Gayle, Deputy Director of Advanced Manufacturing at NIST; NextFlex updates; project updates; and a special panel moderated by Dr. Eric Forsythe, ARL, NextFlex Program Manager entitled “DoD Needs and Solutions.” This event will be hybrid, and you can learn more and register here.

In other exciting event news, mark your calendars for an upcoming workshop June 27 – 29, “The FHE Commercialization Path for Aerospace Applications,” which will be held at The Boeing Company’s facility in Renton, WA. This workshop will explore applications, opportunities, and challenges for flexible hybrid electronics in aerospace and aviation, including commercial and military aircraft, UAVs, and space. The workshop will feature technical presentations on the state of the art, R&D and manufacturing, and application needs and potential solutions. Presentations will include objectives identified by commercial manufacturers, DoD, Boeing and NASA. Registration will open Monday, March 20, so watch for more information soon. All are welcome to attend this workshop.

Finally, as you may know, NextFlex will participate in its JDMC evaluation this year, which is a requirement that all DoD institutes undergo. The purpose of the evaluation is to ensure technical coordination and alignment with the DoD priorities that guide our mission. Our JDMC evaluation is scheduled for early in August. Due to the time-intensive preparation for the evaluation, we cannot both prepare for that and prepare for Innovation Days. So, Innovation Days will not be held in August, but instead it will move to its new time in the spring of 2024. Moving Innovation Days to the spring also relieves the time proximity problem with the Flex Conference, which now makes its home with SEMICON West held in mid-July. Mark your calendars for March 26 – 28 for Innovation Days 2024!

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Malcolm J. Thompson, Ph.D.
NextFlex Executive Director