ACME (Advanced Characterization and Modeling of Electronics) group is a research group of the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua, which has been conducting advanced research in the latest semiconductor technologies, collaborating with universities, companies and research centers in Europe, the United States and Japan. The aim of its research activity is to understand and overcome the limitations of the above technologies, facilitating their development and industrial production.

In recent years, great emphasis is placed on semiconductor devices for harnessing renewable energy (photovoltaic cells), efficient energy conversion (power supplies for high-power electrical systems), efficient lighting (LEDs), and advanced and sustainable communication systems (radio frequency devices and lasers for fiber optic communication). It is precisely on these pressing issues that the group’s activities are now focused.

Specifically, the ACME name is inextricably linked to innovative semiconductor materials, such as Gallium Nitride (GaN), that promise simultaneous increases in performance and efficiency in modern electronic systems. To unite the global scientific and industrial communities working on these issues and promote their goals of efficiency and sustainability, starting in 2016 the ACME group is organizing the GaN Marathon, a conference where innovative results and guidelines for future development are presented, in line with the sustainability goals of the Department and the University of Padua. It is in this context that the need to raise awareness, combined with a desire to make a small contribution to the cause, led to linking this important conference with support for the WOWnature initiative, giving each participant a tree as a gift, and enabling them to contribute concretely to the sustainability cause by adopting additional trees.