TECHCON 2008: Technology and Talent for the 21st Century

TECHCON 2008 Proceedings

The SRC community - industry, students, faculty and staff - came together in Austin to make the 10th iteration of TECHCON a resounding success. Even though the event was rescheduled from September, thanks to Hurricane Ike, some 346 people rearranged their schedules to gather for this event at the Renaissance Hotel in Austin. The students get better with every event and industry support continues to be outstanding. And so the tenth iteration of TECHCON is declared a success.

SRC students presented 144 papers in 16 sessions over a two day period. Sessions included papers from FCRP, GRC, and NRI - a format that got rave reviews. Total attendees included 138 industry participants, 18 faculty, 158 students, and 30 others (staff, etc.) - 346 altogether, a good mix for outstanding networking.

Invited speakers from industry and academia provided a glimpse of a very exciting future for the semiconductor industry. Dr. Lisa Su, Freescale Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Networking & Multimedia Group, delivered the keynote address on Monday evening. SRC was very proud to have an SRC student alumus deliver the keynote. Professor Allan MacDonald, NRI researcher at UT/Austin was the speaker at the Invited Session Tuesday afternoon, providing a look at the exciting possibilities for new devices and new physics discoveries using graphene.

A new event for TECHCON 2008 was a faculty lunch with Dave Seeger that included an overview of the future directions for projects to be sponsored by SRC. Steve Hillenius and Betsy Weitzman were also in attendance and gave overviews of the GRC and FCRP programs, respectively. This was followed by lively discussion with the faculty asking questions of the SRC team. The faculty found this opportunity for informal discussion to be an excellent format for information exchange. A similar event is already in the planning for TECHCON 2009.

There were also awards recognizing excellence within the SRC community. TAB and SACC Chair, Inventor Recognition, and Mahboob Kahn Outstanding Mentor Awards were presented at Monday evening's Conference Banquet. The 2008 Technical Excellence Award was also presented to Professor Robert Daash, Portland State University, and former students Liwei Ning, currently a Research Assistant at Portland State, and Amit Nahar, currently at Texas Instruments. The 2008 Aristotle Award was presented to Professor Laurence Pileggi from Carnegie Mellon University. And the SRC/SIA Design Challenge Phase 1 Winners received their awards. Best in Session Awards were presented at Tuesday's Awards Dinner, the final event of TECHCON 2008.

CareerConnections was held on Monday evening with eight companies setting up recruiting booths and collecting resumes in an effort to make connections between the students and the companies for internships and full time hires.

An evaluation summary and comments from attendees confirm the value of TECHCON to the SRC community. Our thanks to all whose active participation and support made TECHCON 2008 a success.