Welcome to the eighteenth annual research review of the Institute for Microelectronics! The staff, financed by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture, has been regrettably reduced, owing to the economy drive of our university. It consists now of seven full-time and three part-time employees: the head of the institute, three additional professors, two part-time scientists, a secretary, two technical assistants, and one apprentice. Nevertheless, because of the prospering scientific projects, the two scientists that are financed part-time by the federal budget are being upgraded to full employment. Twenty-three additional scientists are funded through scientific projects supported by our industrial partners, by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), by the Christian Doppler Gesellschaft (CDG), and by the EC Framework Programme.

During the last year the EC project EUROSOI, a so-called Thematic Network, has been successfully accomplished, the four projects within the Information Society Technologies (IST) program, named PROMENADE, SINANO, SUGERT, and TARGET are being continued, and two projects named D-DOT FET and PULLNANO - an Integrated Project - have been started. The participation in an Integrated Project of the European Commission is a great honor for our institute. Additionally, three projects funded by the Austrian Science Fund have been initiated successfully. We are very glad that our industrial partners have continued the cooperation: some new projects have been started and others are still under discussion. Furthermore, the work within the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Technology CAD in Microelectronics is progressing well in the second period.

It is a great pleasure for me to be able to report that Siegfried Selberherr has recently received the honorary doctorate degree from the University of Nis, State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. He is the fourth person to receive this distinction from that university, which has approximately 28,000 students.

On the one hand, we are very proud of the high academic and scientific output of our institute, which is reflected by the respectable number of long-term projects and the all-time-high number of publications, especially contributions and participations in international conferences. On the other hand, we are aware that this success is based considerably on our cooperating partners. Therefore, we would like to explicitly express here our gratitude for their trust in our scientific work. With this in mind, we are entering the next year of our institute with high expectations.