On June 2 the Canadian Printable Electronics Industry Association (CPEIA) and the Ottawa section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) announced a strategic partnership that will see the CPEIA presenting printable and flexible electronics as a tool that IEEE members can use to develop new products and applications or enhance existing ones.
Meanwhile, CPEIA members will have the opportunity to apply the technical research and industry and standards development skills of IEEE’s membership to their own projects, CPEIA staff wrote in a press release announcing the agreement.
“It’s a very big achievement for us, because IEEE is a global organization with hundreds of thousands of engineers who enter Canada and events that take place in Canada for a global audience,” Peter Kallai, CPEIA’s president and CEO, told ITBusiness.ca. “And we have a lot of designers and application engineers in different verticals – telecom, the auto sector, consumer electronics, you name it – who can teach them what printable, flexible, wearable electronics can do for their companies.”
Under the agreement, the CPEIA and IEEE’s Ottawa section will collaborate over the next three years on a number of initiatives, including technical working groups and educational events such as webinars, technical seminars and conferences, with the Ottawa section serving as CPEIA’s champion to other IEEE sections. The commitment is non-financial, and afterward both parties will have the option to renew.
In a statement, IEEE Ottawa section chair Janet Davis called the agreement a “natural fit” for both organizations.
The collaborative efforts between CPEIA and IEEE have already begun, with CPEIA hosting a full-day session on printed electronics last month during the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems in Montreal. In July, the organization will return to the city to host a half-day session at the IEEE’s 17th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics as well.
Established in 2014, CPEIA represents more than 50 key players in the Canadian printable, flexible and wearable electronics sector, while the IEEE, originally founded in New Jersey in 1963, comprises more than 421,000 members worldwide in industries such as computer engineering, telecommunications, and consumer electronics. The Canadian chapter has more than 18,000 members, 1800 of them in the Ottawa section.