Said Hamdioui

Said Hamdioui (ce.ewi.tudelft.nl/hamdioui) is Chair Professor of Dependable and Emerging Computer Technologies and Head of the Computer Engineering Laboratory at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Netherlands. He is also the founder and CEO of a startup focused on manufacturing test solutions for emerging technologies. His research bridges emerging paradigms—such as in-memory and brain-inspired computing—with hardware dependability, including testability, reliability, and security.Before entering academia, he held various roles at Intel (USA), Philips Semiconductors R&D (France), and NXP (Netherlands), gaining extensive industrial experience. He holds four patents, authored one book, co-authored two others, and has published over 330 peer-reviewed papers.

Prof. Hamdioui has provided consulting and training to leading semiconductor companies, including Intel, NXP, STMicroelectronics, Renesas, and Huawei. He has collaborated with top academic and industrial partners such as IBM, IMEC, Cadence, ESA, ETH Zurich, and Politecnico di Torino—contributing to advancements in chip design, semiconductors, and electronic design automation (EDA).A frequent keynote speaker and invited lecturer, he has served on editorial boards including IEEE Design & Test, ACM JETC, and IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems. His accolades include the EDAA Outstanding Dissertation Award, European Commission Innovation Award, multiple HiPEAC Tech Transfer Awards, and more than 20 Best Paper recognitions. He was recognized for the Best Tech Idea of the Netherlands (2021), and awarded the prestigious European Innovation Council Transition Grant in 2025.

Prof. Hamdioui is a Senior Member of IEEE, a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, and a Fellow of the Netherlands Academy of Engineering. Ranked among the World’s Top 2% Scientists (Stanford & Elsevier, 2024), he also serves on strategic advisory boards including AENEAS Scientific Committee (Association for European NanoElectronics Activities), Khalifa University (UAE), and the Advantest–University of Stuttgart graduate program on test and reliability.

Artificial Intelligence has become the core infrastructure of modern power, reshaping economies, geopolitics, and society. Yet its rapid rise exposes a critical truth: compute defines capability. Nations that control advanced chips will lead the AI era; those that don’t will depend on others for their digital future.

This talk reveals the hidden challenges fueling this global race: explosive growth in computational demand, unsustainable energy use, carbon impact, and deep vulnerabilities tied to foreign infrastructure and semiconductor supply chains. At the same time, AI is unlocking massive new markets in industry, healthcare, and edge systems; these opportunities are accessible only by countries that combine AI adoption with sovereign semiconductor capacity. We outline a forward-looking roadmap: energy-efficient computing, new architectures, and the urgent need to build national semiconductor ecosystems. In a world where AI is infrastructure, the next “Silicon Nations” will be those that unite AI innovation with sovereign compute.

Talk Title: Silicon Nations: How AI and Chips Are Rewriting Global Power