Kai Konrad leads Global Semiconductor Purchasing at Stellantis, drawing on over 20 years of experience in the semiconductor and automotive industries. His career spans roles in product and system marketing, innovation management, and supplier relations at companies like Infineon and Renesas. In 2019, he transitioned from marketing to procurement, bringing a strategic and cross-functional perspective to semiconductor sourcing. Passionate about transformation, innovation and collaboration, Kai is committed to shaping resilient, future-ready supply chains that support the evolution of sustainable mobility.

Francesco La Via was born in Catania, Italy, in September 1961. He received the M.S. degree in physics from Catania University, Catania, Italy, in 1985. From 1985 to 1990, he had a fellowship at STM, Catania. In 1990, he joined the CNR IMM in Catania as a researcher. During this time, he was a Visiting Scientist at Philips NatLab, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. In 2001 he became senior researcher of the CNR IMM and he is responsible of the research group that work on the new metallization schemes for silicon and silicon carbide. From 2003 he is responsible of the division of CNR-IMM that developed new processes for silicon carbide epitaxy and hetero-epitaxy. From 2020 he become Research Director. He is responsible of several industrial research projects and coordinator of two European projects: CHALLENGE (http://h2020challenge.eu/) and SiC Nano for picoGeo (http://picogeo.eu/). Now is the coordinator of the Wide Band Gap Pilot Line. In this period, he has published more than 350 papers on JCR journals and 4 edited books. He has presented several invited contributions to international conferences and has organized several conferences and tutorials. He has 6 patents on SiC technology and growth. The main research interests are in the field of silicon carbide growth, power devices, detectors and MEMS.