CWTEC 2026: Exploring the Technologies Shaping the Next Semiconductor Frontier
This year’s programme, Engineering the Next Semiconductor Frontier, moves beyond the current AI cycle to examine the deeper engineering challenges shaping the future of semiconductor and photonic technologies.
As the industry evolves, progress is no longer driven solely by miniaturisation. Instead, performance, energy efficiency, bandwidth and system-level innovation are defining the next phase of development.
CWTEC 2026 offers a structured exploration of these shifts, bringing together perspectives across materials, design, manufacturing, and systems integration.
View the full event and register
A Programme Built Around the Key Questions Facing the Industry
The agenda is designed to move from today’s capabilities to future challenges, examining where the UK sits and where it can lead globally.
Session 1: UK Strengths, Capabilities & Gaps
As the semiconductor industry looks to move beyond the current AI wave, this session assesses the UK’s current position in the globally competitive semiconductor ecosystem: our strengths, our gaps, and the opportunities that lie ahead. With a focus on what comes next - from photonics and power electronics to heterogenous integration - we will explore how the UK can shape and lead in the next frontier of technology.
Chair: Steve Taylor, Director of Strategic Marketing, UK Semiconductor Centre
Speakers include:
Simon Thomas, CEO & Co-founder, Paragraf
Commercialising Next-Generation Electronics in the UK
Through Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Paragraf has opened the world's first graphene foundry in here in the UK. The six-inch graphene-on-silicon wafers produced at our Huntingdon manufacturing facility enable next-generation electronics that are already exploring solutions in quantum computing, healthcare, AI and more. This achievement demonstrates genuine strengths of the UK deep-tech ecosystem. With industry and government leaders who are committed to fostering enterprise, Paragraf can stand as a trailblazer - rather than an outlier - for UK tech.
Haydn Povey, CEO SCI Semiconductors
As CEO of SCI Semiconductors, Haydn Povey brings an industry perspective into the discussion on the UK’s semiconductor ecosystem, contributing to the wider conversation on how strengths across the value chain can be translated into long-term capability.
John Boston, Managing Director, Custom Interconnect Ltd
Medium Volume Production and Advanced Packaging in the UK
The UK or in fact Europe cannot compete with the Far East / China for high volume advanced semiconductor packaging. However, there are multiple applications whereby annual quantities are much smaller, but still complex semiconductor packaging is required. This presentation will cover annual quantities ranging from 10off – 1,000,000 off per annum with advanced packaging covering 3D Heterogenous integration, RF devices, wafer bumping for medical devices, SiC & GaN power device packaging and high Cu wirebond count devices for AI processor manufacture. All these technologies are being developed and manufactured in the UK with European OEM and chip start partners.
Session 2: Power Electronics, Photonics and Quantum - Does the Past Dictate the Future?
Are the performance gains still sufficient to justify further investment? With R&D taking place across a range of semiconductor materials, how will material choices be made, and which are ultimately likely to succeed in the market? This could span CS, 2D materials and rare earth metals for semiconductors, devices, interposers, substrates, gratings and heatsinks. How will this expertise help accelerate and support quantum solutions?
Chair: Caroline O’Brien, CEO, CSA Catapult
Speakers include:
Mark Rushworth, CEO, Finchetto
Thin Film Lithium Niobate: The Material Rewriting the Rules of High-Speed Datacoms
As AI workloads push bandwidth beyond what silicon-based architectures can sustain, thin film lithium niobate (TFLN) is emerging as the photonic platform best positioned to meet the high-speed, low-latency demands of next-generation data centre infrastructure. Drawing on Finchetto's development of the world's first fully optical packet switch for HPC and AI networks, Mark will examine where TFLN sits in the photonics material landscape and why the platform choices made today will define data centre network architecture for the next decade.
Professor Jon Heffernan FREng, Director, National Epitaxy Facility, University of Sheffield
Innovation from Function: New Semiconductor Materials and How to Find Them
Semiconductors are by definition a class of materials and all semiconductor technology is ultimately derived from the multifaceted properties of those materials. How do we continue to find new function from existing semiconductors and what need do we have for new semiconductor materials?
Session 3: Design & Future Compute Architectures
While AI dominates headlines, compute innovation is diversifying. Distinct markets are emerging for data centre training, inference, and edge computing, each requiring specialised solutions. Beyond AI, we are seeing a resurgence in CPU innovation and ultra-low latency optical architectures, while quantum computing nears commercial viability. The UK is well-positioned to lead, boasting a rich history of innovation and over 200 semiconductor design teams. The challenge lies in leveraging these domestic strengths within a global landscape currently controlled by a few massive vendors and customers.
Chair: Alex van Someren, Executive Chair, Photonic Inc.
Speakers include:
Wenmiao Yu, Co-Founder, Director of Business Development, Quantum Dice Ltd.
Enhancing Logistics and Operations with Probabilistic Computing
Operational complexity across logistics, ports, and aviation is increasing at a pace that traditional computing struggles to match. From stochastic demand patterns and network congestion to real-time optimisation under uncertainty, many of today’s hardest problems are inherently probabilistic. This talk will explore how probabilistic approaches can unlock measurable gains in operations.
Phillip Burr, Head of Product, Lumai
The Future of AI Compute Will Be Optical
AI is power-limited, and silicon scaling is slowing at exactly the point inference demand is accelerating. Optical compute is an order of magnitude more energy-efficient than silicon and offers a direct route through the energy wall – this talk sets out the physics, the architecture, and the path to deployment.
Chris Smith, SVP Software
Fractile Ultra-fast Inference at Scale
Large-scale AI inference is beset by the famous "memory wall", with inference speed crushed by delays waiting on data and previous attempts to solve the problem through novel architectures struggling with scale and cost. In this talk Chris will set out the challenges and how Fractile's unique approach combines unparallelled speed with competitive real-world economics.
Session 4: Sovereign and Strategic Supply Chains
Export controls, trade barriers, geopolitical tensions, and competition for critical materials are reshaping where and how semiconductor and photonic supply chains work, turning supply resilience into a question of national strategy. The UK has world class capabilities in chip design, compound semiconductors and photonics, and a growing base in novel, low-cost chip manufacturing. But where are the real bottlenecks in delivering on those strengths at scale, particularly for critical applications like AI, data centres and high-performance compute? Does the UK have the domestic capacity to match its ambitions, or does the path to sovereignty run through backing its own differentiated strengths and the right strategic partnerships?
Chair: Sylvia Lu - Founder & CEO, YOOVIP Ltd
Speakers include:
Gary Graham, Professor in Operations Management, Liverpool John Moores University
Bottlenecks in the Semiconductor Industry supply chain: a reverse Kraljic perspective
This talk explores how key firms in the semiconductor supply chain establish and maintain “bottleneck” positions by controlling critical technologies, scaling capability, and protecting IP. Using network analysis and case studies, it highlights how these firms create high barriers to entry and how geopolitical pressures and government intervention are shaping both risks and opportunities.
Tony Kenyon, Director, Neuroware (UCL)
Neuromorphic Computing - Opportunities for the UK
Brain-inspired, or Neuromorphic, computing offers huge potential to create more sustainable and more powerful computing systems to work alongside our existing digital machines. The UK sees this as a priority and has recently invested in several large initiatives, including Neuroware, the UK Innovation and Knowledge Centre in Neuromorphic Computing Hardware. I will outline the mission of the centre and how it aims to help build a vibrant neuromorphic ecosystem in the UK.
Why This Matters Now
Across the day, a consistent theme emerges: the semiconductor landscape is shifting from scaling-led innovation to system-level complexity.
This creates both challenges and opportunity - particularly for the UK, which holds recognised strengths in design, photonics and advanced materials.
CWTEC provides a forum to explore how these capabilities can translate into long-term leadership.
Join the Conversation
CWTEC 2026 is designed for those working at the forefront of semiconductor and photonics innovation, offering technical insight, practical perspectives and forward-looking debate.