What an incredible year 2020 was ! Who could have forecasted this 12 months ago ? Normally I am on the road about 50 % of my working time. In 2020 I returned on March 12th from the Image Sensor conference in London and since then I have been at home, I could even sleep every night in my own bed. In the week after March 12th all activities, trainings, conferences and other face-to-face meetings were cancelled or postponed. It gave me the time to update my courses. As a nice present, the invitation came to give a plenary talk at the ISSCC2021. That is a great honour to present at the world’s top conference in the field of solid-state circuits. The preparation of the paper and the talk took much more time than expected, but during the second quarter of the year, time was not really an issue.
But then after the Summer the opposite of the Spring happened. Many of the postponed trainings and courses were shifted to the Fall, of course everything on-line. In the beginning the on-line contacts felt very strange and weird, but one gets used to it. Although I do have admit that teaching on-line is completely different of in-class courses. You really miss the body language, the informal contacts, the joined lunches. The participants are also much more quite during on-line events. Much less questions, much less discussion, too bad. Most interesting classes are the ones with most discussions, not just for me but also for the participants.
In my “Goodbye 2019” blog I announced the possibility to start with a Summer School in 2020. Because of the well-known issues in the world, this idea was buried. Also the Harvest Imaging Forum 2020 had to be postponed. Too bad, but there was no other choice. For both events, the interaction between people is the most rewarding part of participation. And if that cannot be guaranteed, then it is better to cancel and/or to postpone.
So now that 2020 is almost completed, the question is : “What will 2021 bring ?”. The technical courses and trainings of Harvest Imaging will continue, that is for sure. Several courses are already booked for the Spring 2021. Work is going on for the agenda of the second half of 2021. Also the work on the Reproducibility, Variability and Reliability of CIS will continue. The first part being the reproducibility and variability will come to an end after 5 years, but the experiments in the field of reliability will continue. New stressing experiments just have started on devices with removed coverglass and removed microlenses. Very interesting stuff to look forward to. Don’t think that CIS devices are invulnerable !
Wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Let’s hope that the problems we all are facing these days will be over in 2021. “See” you soon.
Albert, 22-12-2020.