IDEFI-FINMINA: a French educative project for the awareness, innovation and multidisciplinarity in microelectronics

Abstract

This paper presents a mid-term assessment of an eight-year project hosted by the National Network for Education in Microelectronics (GIP-CNFM) in the frame of a French governmental Investment Program for the Future in education (PIA). This framework notably includes a specific section, IDEFI (Excellence Initiative for Innovative Education), in which the project FINMINA (standing for Innovative Education in Microelectronics and Nanotechnologies) is currently running. The FINMINA consortium counts 14 partners among which 12 are academics, one industrial body and the GIP-CNFM, which is the coordinator. The project strategy aims at upgrading and developing the practices for undergraduate and postgraduate students enhancing their technical skills and know-how in the fields of Microelectronics and Nanotechnologies. The targeted topics are: i) Innovation in the lab practices on the GIP-CNFM platforms ii) Awareness of schoolers to electronics and engineering; iii) Multidisciplinary approaches highlighting the wide spectrum of microelectronic application domains; iv) Lifelong Learning. These four aspects are considered as key elements for motivating students to develop innovative technical skills. After a presentation of the project and its objectives, the paper describes the main results after five years; in total, 65 innovative platforms have been used by more than 4,000 students each year, corresponding to about 300,000 hours of practices per year.