As required from a company established in the forefront of such competitive fields, the company invests a significant part of our turnover in R&D and in the training of our personnel. Furthermore, key part of our quest for excellence is preserving and expanding links with industry and academic world as well as participating in international state-of-the-art technology research projects.

Many of GDT's employees as well as management team members take actively part in the academic discussions and publications. The company also encourages employees to take membership in industry related associations.

As a company, GDT is a founding member of the Hellenic Semicoductor Industries Association (HSIA) and the Hellenic Technology Clusters Iniative (HTCI).

HSIA aims at:

• advancing the Hellenic semiconductor industry by bringing together and coordinating activities of its members
• enchancing EU and international awareness and building strong ties between its industrial and academic members
• promoting its members products and technologies to the international semiconductor and telecom industry
• helping promote its industrial members to the European and international VC community

HTCI

April 2005 the Hellenic Ministry of Development began to push forward a framework to take advantage of Greece’s local competitive characteristics and help fuel national growth and innovation. This framework consisted of the implementation of targeted clusters in selected technology areas, where there is substantial industry potential in knowledge-intensive and exports-oriented segments that can yield world-class marketable results. The outcome of this effort was the creation of the Hellenic Technology Clusters Initiative (HTCI). HTCI (www.htci.gr) targets the formation and/or fostering of clusters that can compete at an international level, be knowledge-intensive able to attract Foreign Direct Investment, and can help Greece become a value-added services market. The first HTCI pilot program has just been launched and targets the area of Semiconductors & Embedded Systems, comprising of a group of more than 20 organizations, including multinationals, SMEs, Research Institutes, and University Microelectronics labs. The Innovation Center for Microelectronics in Athens, Greece, hosts 15 high-tech companies with more than 500 employees.