Welcome to the Institute for Microelectronics' twenty-first annual research review! The staff, financed by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research, has been fortunate to increase by one more scientist and now consists of eight full-time and five part-time employees: the head of the institute, three additional professors, two part-time scientists, a secretary, two technical assistants, and one apprentice. Nevertheless, because of the prospering scientific projects, the five scientists who were financed part-time by the federal budget have now been upgraded to full employment. Nineteen additional scientists are currently 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.

During the last year, the EC project PULLNANO - an Integrated Project - was successfully completed and two projects within the Information Society Technologies (IST) program, namely D-DOT FET and ATHENIS, are both continuing. The ENIAC project, MODERN, which belongs to the "Joint Undertaking Programme" between the European Commission and the national research funding, has been initiated. Additionally, seven projects funded by the Austrian Science Fund are making good progress. We are very glad that our industrial partners have continued the cooperation and some new projects have been started.

We are very proud of the high academic and scientific output that our institute is producing and this is reflected by the respectable number of long-term projects and the all time high number of publications, especially contributions and participations in international conferences. However, we are aware that this success is based considerably on our cooperating partners. Therefore, we would like to express here explicitly our gratitude for their trust in our scientific work. In this sense, we are entering the next year of our institute with high expectations.