Richard (Dick) Otte, CEO of Promex Industries Inc., has received the 2026 Founder’s Award from the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS). The award recognises his significant technical and leadership contributions to the microelectronics packaging industry, as well as his role in building Promex into an advanced microelectronics manufacturing company.
Founded in Silicon Valley in 1975, Promex has now spent over 50 years evolving the electronics industry, expanding from its early manufacturing roots into a provider of advanced microelectronics assembly, packaging, and heterogeneous integration for medical and biotechnology applications.
Otte has led Promex since 1995 and has overseen:
- The acquisition of three companies.
- Expansion of the company’s workforce and facilities.
- Investments in advanced manufacturing and cleanroom capabilities.
- The development of expertise in mixed-technology assembly and medical-device manufacturing.
- The establishment of a manufacturing model capable of taking highly complex devices from early process development and prototype builds into production.
Otte holds over 75 patents spanning materials, manufacturing processes, and electronic packaging strategies and has participated in industry road mapping efforts through such organisations as IPC, iNEMI, ITRS, HIR, and the MIT Micro Photonic Centre Optical Roadmap.
“Dick has spent his career looking beyond what electronics manufacturing can do today and asking what it will need to do next,” said Dave Fromm, President of Promex. “His contribution isn't limited to building Promex. He has helped advance the materials, processes, and packaging approaches that allow increasingly complex technologies to move out of labs and into manufacturable products. The IMAPS Founder’s Award is especially meaningful because it recognises both sides of that legacy.”
Otte added, “Over the course of my career, we've gone from asking how we can make individual electronic components smaller to asking how we can bring entirely different technologies together into one functioning system. That change has fundamentally altered electronics manufacturing. It is also what makes this such an exciting time to be in this industry.”
