
An Interview with HICAM
Question: Can you tell us about the focus of your organization?
Answer: HICAM’s board is led by serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Spier, and the organization is overseen by executive director Marcus Metzger, an artist and manufacturing leader who previously led a coworking and technology center called Future Space NYC in New York. Charles Donly a global leader in multi-disciplinary engineering and advanced manufacturing is Head of Technology and Grants.
Together, we are building partnerships to bring together emerging technology, business and product ideas, and industry support. With our non-profit status, focus on Advanced Manufacturing (AM) and location in the center of Texas (Austin) we will help measure new skills and develop the workforce, create partnerships to innovate on projects and help companies using AM to scale.
Q: HICAM is a newer member of NextFlex. What drew you to the hybrid electronics manufacturing community and what are you hoping to accomplish through your membership?
A: HICAM wants to build on the nationally distributed network of Advanced Manufacturing Centers to derisk and deploy AI technologies building resilient manufacturing systems capable of responding to the increasing complexity and unpredictability of global supply chains. This structure allows us to make the institute sustainable and harness Austin’s unique strengths including the startup ecosystem, top collection of universities focused on STEM and high-tech industry growth in automotive, aero/space, oil and gas, mining, robotics and other technologically demanding industries needing automation.
Q: What is a key innovation that will enable widespread adoption of hybrid electronics and related technologies, and what application areas are HICAM working in?
A: Computing and decisions at the edge are getting closer to a reality. Augmented reality is being tested in various forms and taken seriously as an enhancement in AM. Austin has a number of high-performance compute partners and also global contract manufacturing companies that will want to integrate a FHE solution in edge computing in their factories, facilities and interaction with advanced equipment.
Q: What upcoming activities are you most excited about?
A: A founding principal of HICAM is collaborating in person, and making the time to harness non-obvious ideas and fortunate associations. We are excited for our first NextFlex event which is the upcoming Innovation Days in March 2025. Additionally, we always like it when people stop by in Austin. In fact, we were thrilled to have Dr. Scott Miller, NextFlex Director of Technology, stop by HICAM for our Defense Manufacturing happy hour on December 5th.
Q: In what ways do you think NextFlex and hybrid electronics can impact microelectronics manufacturing and/or your own product development?
A: One growing field is humanoid robotics. Austin is home to companies working to get their robots into factories ASAP. Beyond the robot itself, there is research in soft actuators, cobot end-effectors, and other flexible technology in the greater Austin area.