I am delighted to invite you to attend the inaugural edition of WiPDA Europe 2022, to be held here at the University of Warwick, UK. This workshop originally started in the USA in 2013 and was primarily established to provide a platform for researchers in Wide Bandgap semiconductor devices and applications to share their knowledge and experience with each other. At that time, the community was starting to grow, and interest was certainly picking up. Now however, it has hit mainstream and is here to stay, with all major OEM automotive manufacturers developing a significant investment in the technology, which is spilling over into a whole host of related markets. The technology is developing fast and will have a major contribution to the global ambitions of net-zero carbon.

The interest is global, and the sister version of the conference (WiPDA Asia) was established a few years later, which has grown significantly despite the impact of the pandemic on travel. Now this has moved to Europe with WiPDA Europe, which is intended to be interleaved with the Asian conference on a bi-annual basis.

We are proud to be asked to host this prestigious event at Warwick, which has been researching in Wide Bandgap devices for over 17 years and has become the largest specialist research group in the UK focussing in this area, with a particular emphasis on silicon carbide technology. The event will take place on the university campus which is situated in the heart of England and close to the nearby Birmingham international airport. It will be held on campus at The Slate conference centre, which is located with ample high-quality university hotel accommodation for attendees that wish to stay on site. The tutorial session on Sunday the 18th will be located in the Zeeman building on campus, just a few minutes walk away. The welcome reception will be located in the National Automotive Innovation Centre.

I would like to thank the local organising committee and the IEEE for bringing this event to fruition in such a short time scale especially my co-chairs, Dr Jose Ortiz-Gonzalez and Dr Marina Antoniou, as well as Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski and Professor Jian Sun from TC6 in PELS at the IEEE. We would also like to thank Tsuyoshi Funaki from WiPDA Asia for his help and encouragement. Without their help and support, this would not be possible. There are many other individuals that have contributed or have yet to contribute including all the attendees we would like to thank. We hope that we will have a strong attendance at the workshop from a wide global reach, and we look forward to welcoming you to Warwick in September 2022.

Professor Phil Mawby

University of Warwick, March 2022