Plenary / Invited
30 Years of Nanoimprint and 25 Years of NNT: A Success Story and Unfinished Chapters
Dr. Stephen Y. Chou is the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering at Princeton University and a serial entrepreneur. He is the founder and founding chairman of Nanonex Corp., NanoOpto Corp., and Essenlix Corp., and a co-founder of BioNano Genomics Inc. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a recipient of the IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award, the IEEE Nanotechnology Pioneer Award, the Nanoimprint Pioneer Award, the 30-Year Nanoimprint Pioneer Award, and the 30-Year Nanoimprint Grand Achievement Award. He is also a Packard Fellow and a Fellow of IEEE, AVS, ISNM, and Optica. Two of his technologies, nanoimprint and the nanochannel DNA analyzer, were recognized by MIT Technology Review as among the “Ten Emerging Technologies That Will Change the World.”
Over the past four decades, Dr. Chou has made foundational, field-creating contributions to nanofabrication; electrical, optical, magnetic, and biological nanodevices and their applications; bioengineering; and medical diagnostics. Through unconventional scientific vision and creativity, he has uncovered transformative nanoscale phenomena, established new device operating principles and scaling regimes beyond classical limits, invented new, paradigm-shifting nanotechnologies and nanodevices, and created new research fields, products, and industries. His best-known inventions include nanoimprint lithography, a paradigm-shifting approach to nanopatterning that has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry; the single-electron MOS memory (SEMM); the gate-all-around (GAA) transistor; lithographically induced self-assembly (LISA); single-domain patterned media, a new paradigm for magnetic data storage; subwavelength optical elements (meta-optics); the nanochannel single-DNA-molecule analyzer (co-developed with Prof. Robert Austin); the ultrasensitive D2PA biosensor; and the iMOST (Instant Mobile Self-Test) platform.
Dr. Chou founded, built, and led Nanonex, NanoOpto, and Essenlix, and co-founded BioNano Genomics—each commercializing a field he pioneered: nanoimprint; nanoimprint-made subwavelength optical elements (meta-optics); the iMOST instant mobile self-test platform; and nanochannel DNA/RNA mapping—transforming his inventions and visions into new industries and significant commercial products.
With unconventional thinking, creativity, and prolific invention, Dr. Chou has created new fields, new products, jobs, and multibillion-dollar industries—producing broad and enduring worldwide scientific, technological, industrial, economic, and societal impact. He has authored more than 700 journal and conference papers and is the primary inventor on more than 400 patents/applications, more than half of which have been granted.
Science in our times - for People, Planet and Prosperity
Prof Lars Montelius, Lund University, Sweden. His +35 years of work have centered around development of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials. He has published about 250 articles, presented 100´s of invited talks and has filed about 40 patents. During 2014-2022 he was the Director–General of the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, headquartered in Portugal. He is Board Director of the IAM-I association and an Advisor to several European HEIs and RTOs. He is the founder & funder & advisor of several Swedish deep-tech companies such as: Obducat AB, Cellevate AB, WaterSprint AB, Compacta AB, Embedded Nano AB.
Enabling Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing with Nanoimprint Lithography and Inkjet-Based Adaptive Planarization
Mr. Keita Sakai is the Senior General Manager of the Semiconductor Production Equipment PLM Center 3 at Canon Inc. Since 2015, he has been engaged in the development of Nanoimprint Lithography in this organization. Prior to this role, he was part of the R&D Headquarters of Canon Inc. He has focused his career on next-generation lithography, including F2 lithography, ArF immersion lithography, and nanoimprint lithography. He received an M.S. degree in Materials Science from Keio University, Japan.
Reversal Nanoimprint Pattern Transfer for Three-Dimensional Biosensors and Metadevice Platforms
Stella W. Pang is a Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at City University of Hong Kong, China, and serves as Director of the Center for Biosystems, Neuroscience, and Nanotechnology. She has more than 400 journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, and invited presentations. Prof. Pang holds 13 patents in nanotechnology and microsystems, with two additional patent applications pending.
Her research interests center on advanced nanofabrication technologies and their applications in biomedical sensors, microelectromechanical systems, terahertz devices, and metadevices. She has delivered 35 short courses covering these topics. Prof. Pang is a Fellow of IEEE, ECS, AVS, HKIE, and HKAE.
Manufacturing of All-Inorganic AR Waveguides and Metaoptics by Additive Nanoimprint Lithography
Jim Watkins is the Eugene M. and Ronnie Isenberg Professor of Integrative Science and Director of the Institute for Hierarchical Manufacturing (IHM) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is Founder of Myrias Optics, Inc., a company commercializing additive nanoimprint lithography for the manufacturing of all-inorganic metaoptics and waveguides. Professor Watkins received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts. He has guided the research of more than 50 Ph.D. students, has authored more than 150 papers in leading journals, and has been granted more than 30 patents, which have been licensed in the fields of semiconductors, energy storage, and optics. Professor Watkins is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the National Academy of Inventors.
Recent Trends in Heterogeneous Integration
Received a Ph.D. in Received a Ph.D. in Engineering from Tohoku University Currently a professor at the Academy of Innovative Semiconductor and Sustainable Manufacturing, National Cheng Kung University Focusing on heterogeneous integration in semiconductor technology (Thermal management, Hybrid bonding, Low-temperature bonding between compound semiconductor substrate materials, Glass and SiC interposers, Antenna-in-Package and Wafer cleaning), I am conducting joint research in collaboration with Taiwanese foundry manufacturers (TSMC etc.), OSAT manufacturers (ASE, etc.), and Japanese materials and equipment manufacturers.
Optical metamaterial devices and their applications
Takuo Tanaka is a team director of RIKEN. He received his PhD degree in 1996 from Osaka University. After that, he joined faculty of Engineering Science, Osaka University as an assistant professor. In 2003, he moved to RIKEN as a research scientist in Nanophotonics Laboratory. He was promoted to associate chief scientist in 2008 and to chief scientist in 2017. From 2025, he became Team director of RIKEN Center for Advanced Photonics. His research background is three-dimensional microscopy such as confocal microscope. Recently, he is studying about nanophotonics, plasmonics, and metamaterials fields with developing many new nanofabrication techniques.
Mass production technology for metalens using nanoimprint
After receiving his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1996, Professor Heon Lee worked as a researcher at Bell Labs, Siemens Microelectronics, and HP Labs, and has been a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Korea University since 2004. His main research areas are the development of metalens fabrication technology using nanoimprinting and the development of radiative cooling technology utilizing metamaterials. He is the author of 400 sci papers, with 13,329 citations and an H-index of 58.
Novel approaches for scaling up NIL in Surface-Relief Grating (SRG) Manufacturing
Dr. Ji holds a PhD degree in Materials Engineering from the University of Halle, jointly with the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Germany. He has over 25 years of professional experience in nanoimprint lithography technology across the complete NIL industrial chain: equipment, materials, processes and commercialization.
He founded Qingdao Germanlitho Co., Ltd. in 2015, establishing its NIL business to globally competitive standards and advancing localized high-end NIL industrial deployment.
Dr. Ji has published more than 30 high-impact papers. As the primary inventor, he holds nearly 200 granted IP rights including 58 invention patents. These proprietary core technologies support high-precision, low-cost and mass-producible NIL manufacturing solutions.
Soft-UV NIL at wafer scale: A story of distortion
Dr. Jérôme RECHE earned his doctorate in 2019, specializing in metrology data fusion. He advanced soft nanoimprint lithography at wafer-scale, he led research for its integration as a standard and its promotion for 3D applications. Since 2024, he has been part of CEA-LETI's expert group. He is also a coordinator of the RéNIL group, a leading NIL group in France, promoting nanoimprint lithography and its industrialization. He is currently pushing for a more sustainable microelectronics industry, focusing on fluor-free lithography materials and sustainable processes like NIL.
Materials for nanoimprint lithography – enabler or bottleneck?
Dr. Arne Schleunitz studied Electrical Engineering at Technical University of Berlin and is Chief Technology Officer of micro resist technology GmbH (MRT), a leading developer and manufacturer of advanced photoresists, polymers, and specialty materials for micro- and nanotechnology applications which recently joined the TOK Group. In his role, he oversees the company’s strategic development, international business activities, and innovation initiatives, while fostering close collaboration with customers, research institutions, and industrial partners worldwide.
Helmut Schift studied electrical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe (now Karlsruhe Institut of Technology KIT), Germany and performed his Ph.D. studies at the Institute of Microtechnology Mainz, Germany. He received his diploma in 1991, and Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.), both at the University of Karlsruhe in 1994. He specialized in micro-optics, high aspect ratio lithography and polymer replication (LiGA technology). After his graduation in 1994, he joined the Paul Scherrer Institute as staff member. He is head of the Advanced Nanomanufacturing Group in the Laboratory of Nano and Quantum Technologies. As one of the pioneers in nanoimprint lithography (NIL), a next generation manufacturing technique for a range of future applications with down to sub-20 nm resolution, he has developed enabling techniques for the patterning of functional surfaces with topological and chemical surface contrast, and used these processes in different research and application fields. He is a co-author of 150 scientific papers, including reviews and book chapters, and editor of the NaPa Library of Processes (https://www.psi.ch/en/lnq/people/helmut-schift). H. Schift is member of the steering board of the Int. Conference on Nanoprint and Nanoimprint Technology (NNT). Since 2019, H. Schift is Consultant on Research Integrity (30%) at PSI. For this purpose, in 2021, he completed MAS studies of Applied Ethics at the University of Zürich. For the MNE Micro and Nano Engineering Conference in Sept. 2026, he was acting as program co-chair.