Francesca Iacopi

Francesca Iacopi is an award-winning engineer specialising in materials and nano-electronics who has over 20 years' experience in the semiconductor industry and in academia. She has about 150 peer-reviewed publications and holds 10 US patents in the field of semiconductor technology.

A Professor of Electronics in the Faculty of Engineering & IT at UTS, Francesca has achieved international recognition for her contributions to the ITRS roadmap of materials and processes for advanced semiconductor technologies.

Her seminal work at the international R&D organization IMEC on low-k dielectrics for on-chip interconnects, together with Intel, AMD and other partners, has guided the industrial uptake of porous dielectrics into modern semiconductor microprocessors.

In 2009, she accepted a one-year Guest Professorship at the University of Tokyo, Japan with Professor K. Terashima, to study applications of cryogenic and supercritical fluid plasmas in semiconductor technologies.

Before starting her academic career in Australia in 2012, Francesca directed the Chip-Package Interaction strategy for the world's second-largest semiconductor foundry, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, in California.

At Griffith University, she invented a process to enable the harnessing of graphene on silicon, with applications in miniaturized technologies, such as nanophotonics, bio-compatible sensing and energy storage.

Francesca is also interested in energy and electronics sustainability, and Development Studies (she has an MA in Applied Anthropology, with a Major in Migration and Minority Policies).

She has a MSc in Physics from Roma La Sapienza University, Italy (1996) and a PhD in E.E./Materials Science from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (2004).

She is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia and a Senior Member of IEEE. She is an Elected Member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Electron Devices Society, and founder and chair of the local IEEE EDS Chapter. She is also Chief Investigator and Chair of Industry Liaison for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems.

Francesca’s major awards include a Gold Graduate Student Award from the Materials Research Society (2003, Boston, USA); a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council (2012-2016); and a Global Innovation Award (2014, Washington DC, USA).

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

• ARC Future Fellow Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia1 Oct 2012 - 1 Sep 2016

NON-ACADEMIC POSITIONS

• Founder and Chair, IEEE Electron Devices Society NSW Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Sydney, Australia1 Dec 2019
• Elected Member, Board of Governors Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Piscataway, United States1 Jan 2021
• Senior Member of Technical Staff GlobalFoundries (United States), Custom Packaging Technologies, Santa Clara, United States1 Oct 2010 - 1 Oct 2011
• Staff and Senior Scientist Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre, Interconnects and Nanotechnology, Leuven, Belgium1 Sep 1999 - 30 Jun 2010

DEGREES

• PhD in EE University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium1 Mar 2004
• MSc in Physics, Major in Optics/Solid State Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy28 Nov 1996
• M A in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium30 Jul 2009