Françoise Chombar
Chief Executive Officer
Melexis

Biography
Françoise Chombar is Chairwoman and co-founder of Melexis. She has been the CEO of Melexis for 18 years. She has held executive positions with a number of tech companies. Ms Chombar is currently member of the Board of Umicore, the Board of Soitec and the advisory Board to Byteflies.She is equally president of the STEM platform, an advisory board to the Flemish government, aiming to encourage young people to pursue a Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics education.Françoise Chombar’s long-term commitment to actively advocating more STEM and more gender balance is driven by the profound belief in their positive societal impact.She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Vlerick Award, the Global Prize for Women Entrepreneurs of BNP Paribas, ICT-Personality of the Year by Datanews, Science Fellowship at the VUB, Honorary Award by the Flemish Community, the Computable Lifetime Achievement Award and a Honorary Award by the KUL.Ms Chombar holds a Master’s Degree in interpreting (Dutch, English and Spanish) from Ghent University.

Bernd Deutschmann
Head of IFE team
Institute of Electronics, TU Graz

Biography
Dr. Bernd Deutschmann received his M.Sc. in 1999 and his Ph.D. in 2002 in Telecommunications Engineering from Graz University of Technology, Austria. Between 2000 and 2006 he worked at austriamicrosystems AG/Austria as Senior EMC engineer. From 2006 to 2013 he was with Infineon Technologies AG in Munich/Germany working as a Senior Staff EMC Expert. He is currently a full professor at Graz University of Technology, where he heads the Institute of Electronics. His research interests include EMC-compliant design of electronic systems and integrated circuits. As part of his research activities, he has filed several patents and has authored and co-authored numerous papers and technical articles in the field of electromagnetic compatibility of integrated circuits.

Patrick Bressler
Head of central office Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics
Fraunhofer Mikroelektronik

Biography
Dr. Patrick Bressler is currently the director for emerging technologies at the Fraunhofer Microelectronics Group / Forschungsfabrik Mikroelektronik Deutschland (FMD). Responsibilities include developing research and innovation partnerships with academia and industry, as well as advancing Fraunhofer participation in European and international R&D&I programmes.Earlier career stages include serving as Executive Vice President of Fraunhofer USA, in charge of operations at the seven Fraunhofer R&D centers in the USA, and as the Chairman (2012-2015) of the Materials Science and Engineering Expert Committee (MatSEEC). Dr. Bressler is a physicist by training with a research background in materials research with synchrotron radiation, semiconductor and surface physics.

Henryk Schoder
Vice President Human Resources
X-fab

Biography
Since 2014 Henryk Schoder has been overseeing the global HR activities for the X-FAB Group as VP Human Resources. Prior to joining X-FAB, Henryk was HR & IT Manager at Masdar’s solar manufacturing plant in Germany. Before that he worked as Senior Consultant and Managing director for the MRL Consulting Group in the UK, Singapore and Dubai. He started his career as recruiting manager at Infineon. Henryk holds a Master degree in Psychology from the University of Jena, Germany.