Panel: "Board Test and ITC: What Does the Future Hold?"

The International Test Conference is becoming a chip-centric event. This is what you might expect to be told. And if you ask which conference a board test engineer should attend in order to get information about innovation in the field of board test, the answer may be: there are several exhibitions dealing with electronic manufacturing, there you can find what you are looking for. Unfortunately, the audience of this kind of expositions is not interested in innovation if the same innovation is not supported by a commercial solution available on the market. Therefore, a researcher is scarcely motivated in attending those exhibits and explaining his smartest solution for a single problem. If no researchers are attending the event, the event itself has not the same appeal. On the other side, the board test engineer might wonder why board test was not among the hot topics during last years at ITC, i.e. which is the scenario of innovation in the field of board test: does board test suffer from a lack of academic interest? Or, perhaps, are board test engineers used to talk with researchers about their needs?