Imec – consultancy at the forefront of microelectronics

The client

Imec is a world-leading research and innovation center in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. With a state-of-the-art R&D infrastructure, top researchers and a team of over 5500 employees, they take on a wide array of R&D projects. From advanced semiconductors and beyond 5G communication to silicon photonics, artificial intelligence and sensing technologies. Their innovations are applied in various domains, such as health and life sciences, mobility, industry 4.0, agrofood, smart cities, sustainable energy, education, … 

The added value of our consultants 

Nikolaos Korovesis, Consultant data science 

Some might think that Imec is purely a research center focused on developing the latest semiconductor technologies. In reality, Imec’s expertise extends far beyond that, driving innovation across multiple domains, including healthcare. As part of a multidisciplinary team working on bioprocess monitoring within the context of cancer treatment, Nikolaos contributed to developing a data processing framework capable of turning vast amounts of complex imaging data into meaningful biological insights.

Each experiment in the project generated hundreds of gigabytes of imaging data. To handle this scale, Nikolaos designed and maintained a scalable data processing pipeline running on a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster, enabling faster feedback from the experiments.

Using Python and its scientific ecosystem (including Dask, PyTorch, and NumPy), Nikolaos helped build efficient computer vision and machine learning workflows and contributed to developing algorithms for holographic image processing. By choosing a simple yet powerful pipeline architecture, he reduced processing time from roughly 24 hours to just 4 hours per experiment, while also defining a standardized output structure to streamline future analysis.

Throughout the project, Nikolaos collaborated closely with scientists and engineers across diverse disciplines, including biologists, optics engineers, hardware engineers, and data scientists from both Imec and VIB. This collaboration fostered a deep understanding of the project and encouraged cross-disciplinary learning.

The project has been a success and is currently entering its next phase. "I am proud to have contributed to a project that aims to improve lives through technological innovation."

For him, the most rewarding aspect was solving difficult problems: those moments when persistence finally led to a breakthrough. One of the biggest challenges was aligning the expectations of different teams with varying priorities, which taught him the importance of strategic prioritization: sometimes, the tasks that seem less exciting are the ones that move the project forward the most.

Filip Meeus, Senior Consultant embedded systems 

Filip joined an IC development project to test and validate imager devices. He designed a generic test framework in Python to allow developers to build their own characterization scripts. The framework provides all low-level access to custom electronics, test equipment and report generation, including some high-speed data capture. 

Within the team, Filip gave trainings, provided development support and interacted closely with the FPGA developers. Next to development work, he was the main point of contact for the production test house, which receives test routines for mass production. Finally, he supported the client in the integration process by applying his test framework and using the initial configuration and calibration routines as a reference for the end product.