By Dr. Phil Garrou, Contributing Editor

The 2014 Electronic Component Technology Conference (ECTC) took place last week in Orlando, Florida. The ECTC is widely regarded as the premier microelectronic packaging conference in the world. This years meeting, headed up by General Chair Wolfgang Sauter (IBM) and Program Chair Alan Huffman (RTI Int) included: 1170 attendees, 369 oral presentations, and 101 exhibitors.

Alan Huffman –Program Chair

Presentation of IEEE Packaging Awards were made at the IEEE CPMT (Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology) Society luncheon at ECTC.

Avi Bar-Cohen – Packaging Field Award

The most prestigious of all awards, the IEEE CPMT “Field Award” went to Dr. Avram Bar-Cohen for “…contributions through leadership, education, and advocacy to thermal design, modeling and analysis of electronic components and for original research on heat transfer and liquid phase cooling.” Dr. Bar-Cohen is currently Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Maryland and DARPA program manager for their thermal programs known as “ICECool.” It is the goal of the “field award” to give them to individuals whose names are synonymous  with their field of interest and Avi Bar-Cohen is certainly synonymous with thermal issues in microelectronic packaging.

The Electronics Manufacturing Technology Award went to Dr. Raj Master (Microsoft), the Sustained Technical Contribution award to Prof Madhaven Swaminathan (GaTech), the Exceptional Technical Achievement Award to Prof Pradeep Lall (Auburn) and the David Feldman Outstanding Contribution Award to Prof. SW Ricky Lee (Hong Kong Univ).