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60 The PCB Design Magazine • May 2016 by Joe Fjelstad VERDANT ELECTRONICS Professor Paul Svasta is with Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunication and Infor- mation Technology and is head of the Cen- ter for Electronics Technology and Interconnec- tion Techniques (CETTI). He is also a driving force for change and growth in Romania's small but vibrant electronics industry. In 1989, Professor Svasta formulated a vision for Romania's future participation in the global electronics industry following the collapse of communism is his country. He surmised that it might be too late to catch the West and Asia in terms of production of hardware, but he knew that there would always be an increasing need for talented electronic product designers. He thus set about the task of pulling togeth- er professors from other universities in Romania to cooperate in the development of opportuni- ties for their students through a joint collabo- ration with industry in a forum where acade- micians, industry engineers and engineering students could teach and learn from each other and demonstrate their growing and improving capabilities. That forum they named TIE (Inter- connection Techniques in Electronics) and late this April was held the 25 th edition of the an- nual event. The event included lectures from both uni- versities and industry representatives of largely Romanian based companies from other EU na- tions and the US. The event included an infor- mative panel discussion co-chaired by Professor Romanian Electronics Industry Celebrates 25 th Anniversary of TIE Figure 1: A team of evaluators review the work of the participants. Here, Alin Mazare of the Tech- nical University of Pitesti and Cosmin Obreja of Continental Automotive Timisoara look over a student's work. ARTICLE