4M May Bulletin

4M NEWS and EVENTS

*Yuli Toshev*
It is with regret that we must announce the death of our 4M Partner and friend, Professor Yuli Toshev, pictured right. Yuli was our principal contact at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and many of you will have met him last year when he hosted the 4M2007 conference in Borovets. We received a message last week which read: "At 22.04.2008, after one valuable, creative and passionate life, Professor Yuli Toshev passed away. Lets remember forever this remarkable and cosmopolitan person." Our condolences go to Professor Toshev's family and friends.

*4M2008*
This year's conference in Cardiff has attracted another industrial sponsor. Tecan Ltd have agreed to sponsor the 4M2008 conference and we look forward to seeing them there. They join Oxford Lasers, Sarix and Micro Manufacturing Magazine as sponsors. For all information about 4M2008 visit the conference website.

*4M2007 Special Issue*
We are pleased to announce that an agreement has been reached with Springer to publish a Special Issue of the International Journal for Advanced Manufacturing Technologies(IJAMT) on "Multi-Material Micro Manufacturing". This will be based on papers drawn from those first presented at 4M2007 in Borovets. The authors concerned will be contacted shortly.

*Sensors & Actuators Division*
TU Vienna would like to host a follow-up workshop on "cell handling and actuation" (Task 11.6) on June 19-20, 2008. We would like interdisciplinary contributions for this meeting and are aiming for about 20 participants including some industrial representation. If you are interested in participating or require more information please contact Sandra Wilson or Paul Kirby.

*Polymers in Paris*
The Polymers Division were invited by UBS to share exhibition space at the tooling exhibition in Villepinte, Paris, from 31 March - 4 April 2008. With more than 1000 visitors and over 200 exhibitors from more than 30 countries, it was an opportunity to promote, extend and benchmark 4M expertise all around the world. See some images here.

*Polymer Processing Division*
The next meeting of this Division takes place 26th-27th May 2008, at Tekniker in Spain.

*4M Summer School - book early!*
The response to this years Summer School, Monday 23rd June to Friday 4th July 2008, has been very encourgaing and almost half the 24 places are already taken. If you wish register for the School do so as soon as possible by downloading a registration form from the Summer School web page. You can read about last year's first 4M Summer School here.

*Sandpit/Scoping Studies*
Following a competitive call and subsequent appraisal process the following proposals, which were the first four in the ranking, have been selected for funding:
• SS8, Integration in manufacturing of microcomponents, Leader: Pieter Bolt
• SS3, Low-cost Nanoreplication for High Value-Added products - Nanotexturing for new component functions and to enhance demoulding, Leader: Bertrand Fillon
• SS2, Nano-Materials for Micro Manufacturing, Leader: Samuel Bigot
• SS5, Micro Tools for Replication - sandpit report on tooling for polymer μ-replication with Spanish, French and Portuguese SME’s, Leader: Sabino Azcarate

*The 4M Association*
The EC funding for the 4M NoE finishes at the end of September 2008. To continue and sustain the relationships created during the lifetime of the Network we are going to form a 4M Association, which will be an Association open for membership to all, by subscription. To learn more visit the 4M Association page.

OTHER NEWS and EVENTS

*MINAM Technology Transfer Workshop*
This one day workshop which had been planned for 21st May 2008 has been cancelled.

*MINAM Session & Stand at MINAT*
However the MINAM sub-ETP is planning to have a Stand & Session at the MINAT trade fair in Stuttgart. The MINAM session will be on the opening day of the trade fair, Wednesday 7th of October 2008, at the MINAT HotSpots. We would like to invite all partners to participate to this event in Stuttgart. The webpage is here.

*Advance Your Career at Cranfield University*
Wholly postgraduate, Cranfield offers a unique learning environment and an established portfolio of professionally accredited MSc programmes, short courses, and funded research opportunities. Courses include:

* MSc Advanced Materials
* MSc Microsystems and Nanotechnology

For further details please call: +44 (0) 1234 754086 or email Cranfield.

*MINOS-EURONET*
Latest news from this network is here.

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

*4th - 8th May 2008*
ANTEC 2008 - annual technical conference of SPE (society of plastic engineers). For more information visit the website.

*6th - 7th May 2008*
The Micro System Workshop (MSW 2008) takes place in Gothenburg, Sweden. Details on website.

*26th - 27th May 2008*
4M Polymer Processing Division meeting, Tekniker, Spain.

*26th May 2008*
International co-operation event in the field of micro-, nano-, opto-electronics & technology, embedded systems, smart systems and RFID (minaSYS interCOOP 2008)

*19th - 20th June 2008*
4M Sensors & Actuators Division, Cell Handling Workshop, Vienna, Austria. See above.

*23rd June - 4th July 2008*
The second 4M Summer School, Copenhagen, Denmark.

*10th - 11th July 2008*
International Symposium on Flexible Organic Electronics (IS-FOE)

*23rd - 25th July 2008*
CIRP ICME '08 conference in Naples. Details on the event page.

*9th - 11th September 2008 *
The 4th International Conference on Multi-Material Micro Manufacture (4M2008) will be held in Cardiff, UK. Visit the conference website.

*25th - 27th September 2008*
Micro Optics Conference MOC 08, Brussels, Belgium.

*5th - 7th October 2008 *
6th International Workshop on Microfactories (IWMF'08).

*7th - 11th October 2008*
MINAT 2008, Messe Stuttgart .

*21st - 22nd October 2008 *
The Micro Manufacturing Event, Ricoh Arena, Coventry, UK. MM Live!.