IRDC Wrap Up
Last week Kent State University hosted the 26th International Display Research Conference. Flexible displays played a key role at the conference. Jun Souk, Executive Vice President for the LCD division of Samsung gave the keynote address: Flat Panel Display World 2012. In his talk he predicted that glass displays will continue to dominate for the next five years but then flexible displays will lead the next generation. The conference also featured three sessions on flexible displays and a complementary session on electronic paper and reflective displays.
The conference provided a great opportunity to "roll out" FLEXMatters. It also provided me an opportunity to talk with researchers from around the world working in the field and to present to them our vision. As the keynote address made clear, flexible does indeed matter.
The FLEXMatters vision was strongly supported by the presentations of Kent Displays. They showed how they are entering the market now with innovative products. Check out the video of Kent Displays flag, which is a cholesteric display printed on a woven fabric substrate to see just how far they have come. They also demonstrated how they can ink jet print conducting polymer electrodes on polyester substrates to make full color displays.
Among the people I had an opportunity to talk with was Greg Crawford. Greg graduated from KSU in the late 80's and has done extremely well. He is now Dean of Engineering at Brown University and author of Flexible Flat Panel Displays. He was enthusiastic about FLEXMatters and our vision. He agreed that our innovative approach provides us with an early entry to the market and an opportunity to grow this industrial cluster in Northeast Ohio. I have asked him to be a guest columnist so stay tuned for a perspective from outside of Kent on FLEXMatters.