IWCM2 is a tangible example of synergy and collaboration between industry and universities.

IWCM2 – 11th International Workshop on characterization and modelling of memory devices has just concluded, and we asked Prof. Daniele Ielmini of Politecnico di Milano to tell us what was new this year.

What exciting new things came out of this year’s IWCM2?

“Three years after the last workshop held in 2019, there are certainly many novelties worth mentioning. The hefty presence of industry at the workshop, in particular, highlighted the maturity of emerging memory technology, with break-throughs such as phase-change memory, resistive switching memory, and ferroelectric and ferromagnetic RAM, used in both data storage and computing, especially in artificial intelligence”.

IWCM2 makes for fruitful university-company collaborations. What is the added value of this workshop, now at its 11th edition?

“The workshop is the ideal place for universities and industry to interact directly, and I don’t just mean the big multinationals (Micron, STMicroelectronics, Applied Materials, IBM), but also small and medium-sized companies and high-tech startups. The workshop’s small size (about 100 attendees in 2022) encourages interaction and discussion among participants, and helps new collaborations come into being“.