This is the seventeenth annual research review of the Institute for Microelectronics. The staff, financed by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture, consists, as in the past, of ten full-time employees: the head of the institute, three additional professors, three scientists, a secretary, and two technical assistants. Twenty-two additional scientists are funded through scientific projects supported by our industrial partners, by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), by the Christian Doppler Gesellschaft (CDG), and by the EC Framework Programme.

Regarding the status of the EC projects, the projects MULSIC, UPPER+ and NESTOR have been successfully accomplished, the four projects within the Information Society Technologies (IST) program, named TARGET, SINANO, EUROSOI, and PROMENADE are being continued, and one project named SUGERT - a successor of UPPER+ - has been started. Additionally, two projects funded by the Austrian Science Fund have been initiated successfully: one of them is a so-called Start Award and the other concerns participation in a specific research program. We are very happy to be able to report that our industrial partners have continued the cooperation. Furthermore, the work within the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Technology CAD in Microelectronics is progressing well and has already successfully passed the evaluation of the first period.

Although we have by far not yet overcome the fundamental drawbacks of the new organization, we are quite satisfied with our academic and scientific output. Nevertheless, we are aware that this success is based considerably on our scientific projects and on the help of our cooperating partners. Particularly pleasing is an all-time-high number of contributions and participations in international conferences. Therefore, we are entering the next year of our institute with high expectations.