General Partner description:

THALES Research & Technology is composed by 5 research centres located in France, UK, The Netherlands, Singapore, and Canada. THALES Research & Technology France (TRT-Fr), located in Palaiseau near Paris, is the main multidisciplinary research unit of the THALES group. One of the missions of TRT is to ease the transfer of technology, from academic R&D concept to industrial market. S&T skills, ranging from materials elaboration, through component modelling, processing, testing, assembly, and packaging, to integration in appropriate demonstrators are available on site and allow full validation of the technologies investigated before their transfer to operational divisions of Thales Group.

Key personnel:

Dr. Afshin ZIAEI (male) received the B.S. degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of Paris XI (Orsay) in 1997 and the M.S. degree in Electronics and Microwaves Engineering from the University of Paris VI (Jussieu) in 1998 and he received Ph.D. degree in microwave from the Department of Electronics Engineering at CNRS-IEMN (Institut d’Electronique et de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie) in 2001. He joined the research engineer at Thales Research & Technology, France, in 1999. His research interests include the development, design, fabrication, and characterization of RF MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) components such as mechanical switches, transmission lines, etc. He was involved or in charge of many French or European Projects (such as NANO RF, MINIMEMS, ARHMS, SATURNE, NANOPACK, NANOTEG, NANOTHERM, NANOCOM, NANOTEC, SMARTPOWER,  (coordinator of projects), He is a member of IEEE.

Stéphane XAVIER (male) was born in 1980. He received his Master in thin layer and surface engineering from the University Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg (France) in 2005. He then pursued his scientific career with a Research and Technological Diploma from the University d’Evry-Val-d’Essonne( France) in 2007. He joined Thales Research & Technology in 2007 and his specialist field has been cold cathodes based on carbon nanotubes for field emission and microwave tubes applications. Currently in the Technological and Submicronic Process Lab, he is responsible of the electron-beam lithography equipment and the associated research development. Over the past 4 years, he has been heavily involved in several european and national projects (Spiders, Copernicus, Technotubes, Sims, Gospel, NANORF, Opther).

Dr. Paolo Martins (1979) (male) graduated with a Master degree in Micro and Nanotechnologies from University of Claude Bernard Lyon (FR) in 2005. He obtained his Ph.D. on mechanical characterization of submicron thin films for MEMS and NEMS applications from the National Institute of Applied Sciences of Lyon (FR) in 2009. In 2009, he moved to Thales Research and Technology as research engineer where he is responsible of the RF MEMS technology development. His current research focuses on the technological aspects and innovative approach in the field of RF MEMS applications. He has co-authored in several publications and patents and he was involved in several European projects (MEGA, SATURNE, MiniMEMS, NANOCOM, NANOTEC, PEA MEMS-RF, ZoneSEC.)

Significant infrastructure and any major items of technical equipment:

With over 250 highly skilled staff, 13000 m2 of labs of which 1700 m2 clean rooms, TRT research teams perform pioneering work in the most advanced areas of optics & opto-electronics, electronic components for microwave applications, advanced interconnect and packaging, Micro-systems for acoustic, RF & optic applications, materials, software architecture and cognitive science. S&T skills, ranging from materials elaboration (epitaxy of various semiconductors or magnetic thin films, ceramics, polymers, PZT), through component modeling, processing, testing, assembly and packaging, to integration in appropriate demonstrators are available on site and allow full validation of the technologies investigated before their transfer to operational divisions of the THALES Group, including the Business Group Communication Components (Turnover: 945 Meuro in 2000) which proposes RF and millimeter wave components and modules for the telecommunication civilian market.