Minneapolis, MN - The SMTA is pleased to announce three symposia to be featured at SMTA International: the Evolving Technologies Summit, Contract Manufacturing Symposium, and Lead-Free Soldering Technology Symposium. The conference will be held at the Town and Country Resort and Convention Center in San Diego, California on October 4-8, 2009. All symposia feature paper sessions organized by industry experts, and are included with either a VIP or Technical Conference registration.

The Evolving Technologies Summit will feature sessions with topics on Counterfeit Electronics, Nanotechnology, Advanced Packaging, and an International Panel will discuss and debate timely topics that include The Next 100 Years, "stretchable electronics", solar energy and extreme density electronics. A keynote presentation by Lee Smith, Amkor Technologies, on Interconnect Trends and Technologies in 3D Stacked Packaging will be featured at lunch.

The Contract Manufacturing Symposium includes sessions that will be beneficial to contract manufacturers, customers, investors, and anyone else that is interested in business issues for contract manufacturing. One session will focus on business opportunities such as solar, fuel cell and repair services. The second session will highlight management challenges such as ensuring efficient linkage in product development, addressing the challenge of counterfeit products, and exploring opportunities to expand into the solar energy market.

The renowned Lead-Free Soldering Technology Symposium will begin with an overview of Pb-free processing and reliability investigations underway at England's National Physical Laboratory (NPL). The second session will examine the performance variables of new Pb-free solder alloys. The ever-popular case studies session will follow the alternative alloys papers. Featured case studies describe the challenges facing producers tasked with implementing Pb-free solders on high-reliability assemblies having a high mix of component types. The symposium will conclude with a very interesting reliability session.