The new digital society is based on Internet of Things (IoT) and related connected objects are becoming more prevalent around the world. About two hundred billion of these connected objects are expected to be in service by 2030, globally. This evolution implies innovation in many areas of technology, the heart of which is microelectronics.. Connected objects involve many technological components: sensors and actuators, signal processing circuits, data transmission circuits and systems with adapted transmission protocols, energy harvesting systems. All these specialties are directly dependent of the microelectronics capabilities. If the perspectives are exciting, several challenges are appearing. The first is related to the energy consumption of all these objects, which will become enormous by 2030, and unrealistic by 2040. The second is human resources concern. The future engineers and PhD will have many obstacles to overcome. A way to face these challenges is to involve more and more new thin film technologies that must be combined with VLSI ones, and to better train students to this domain with enough know-how and with a large spectrum of knowledge suitable for multidisciplinary applications. The French national network for Higher Education in microelectronics has adopted this strategy. After presentation of the challenges, this paper deals with the innovative activities of the French network in order to face the challenges in a short future.

Olivier Bonnaud, born in 1950 in France, was successively a student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan (France), doctor in microelectronics, doctor "es-science". In 1984, he became a full professor at the University of Rennes 1 and Supelec ("Grande Ecole") in the field of microelectronics. He then created a research laboratory (Microelectronics Laboratory), which he ran until 2013, and had in charge many postgraduate and doctoral courses. His research activities were mainly focused on thin film transistor technologies and polycrystalline silicon films in many applications (VLSI devices, High power devices, sensors and actuators). In terms of both research and teaching, he has published or presented more than 600 articles. He is co-author of six books and more especially of “Polycrystalline Silicon thin film transistors”, edited by Prof. Yue Kuo. He has been chairman or co-chairman of 21 international conferences. Founder of the "West Microelectronics Common Center (CCMO)" in 1985, he was the director of this center until 2010, when he was appointed by the French Ministry of Higher Education, Executive Director of the GIP-CNFM, Public Interest Group - "National Coordination for Education in Microelectronics and Nanotechnologies". Since then, he has coordinated this network which hosts more than 17,000 students per year for practical training in the twelve interuniversity microelectronics centers spread over France. As part of his many international cooperation’s, he was promoted as a foreign international expert on the "1000 talents" program by the Chinese government in 2013. In 2019, he was awarded by the Brazilian Microelectronics Society for his 25 year of cooperation activities with Brazilian universities. Since 2013, he has been Professor Emeritus of the University of Rennes 1 and Permanent Visiting Professor of the South-East University of Nanjing (China).