Microelectronics Education: Proceedings of the 2nd European Workshop held in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, 14–15 May 1998

Dear participant in the second European Workshop on Microelectronics Education, It is a pleasure to present you the Proceedings of the Second European Workshop on Microelectronics Education and to welcome you at the Workshop. The Organising Committee is very pleased that it has found several key persons, with highly appreciated levels of knowledge and expertise, willing to present Invited Contributions to this Workshop. We have striven for an interesting spread over important areas like the expected demands for educated engineers in the wide field of Microelectronics, and Microsystems, in European industry (and beyond!) and innovations in method and focus of our educational programmes. This is the second European Workshop in this area; the first one was held in Grenoble in France in the spring of 1996. It was the initiative of Georges Kamarinos, Nadine Guillemot and Bernard Courtois to organise this Workshop because they felt that Microelectronics was 'at a turning point' to become the core of the largest industry in the world and that this warranted a serious (re-)consideration of our educational imperatives. It is now two years since and their feeling has become reality: nobody doubts that by the year 2000 the microelecnonics industry will be the largest industrial sector. It is also obvious that because of that and because of the predicted shortfall of educated engineers we must continuously reconsider the quality of our educational approach.