Brief History

The first Optoelectronics Week - SEMOPTO, in 1991, had as main purpose to provide researches, students and professionals involved in this technology an opportunity to exchange information. Since then, companies - such as CPqD/Telebrás, Telemig (Telemar), ABC-XTAL, CTBC (Grupo Algar), Fotônica, AsGa, Microeletrônica, AGC Optosystem, Shachin Cury, Lucent Technologies, Leucotron and institutions like CTA-ITA, Unicamp, Unesp, CETUC-RJ, CEFET-PR, UFMG and EFEI (Unifei) - have been participating of the event.

In 1998, the SEMOPTO became an international biennial event. Lecturers from Germany, Chile, Canada, Italy and France, as well as Brazilian specialists, joined it.

In 2000, the event was entitled "Telecommunications International Week" and gave national and international experts a unique chance to discuss the most recent issues from the telecommunications area.

In 2004, the conference was named "IWT - International Workshop on Telecommunications". Important keynote speakers, such as Prof. Dr. Pascal Lorenz, Ethevaldo Siqueira and Prof. Dr. Antônio Alfredo F. Loureiro, participated of the event at Inatel. Several papers and tutorials were presented in 10 different technical areas. IWT'2004 offered a business center where participants could show their products and services, besides tourist and cultural activities in the south of the State of Minas Gerais.

The 2nd edition of the IWT happened in 2007 and turned out to be a forum to exchange new ideas and information. 54 technical papers, authored by researchers from 6 different countries, were presented in 9 technical areas. These papers were chosen between 109 papers submitted from 9 different countries by 55 reviewers who took part in a committee of evaluation. In addition, 4 tutorials and 3 talks were presented by distinguished scientists, covering the hot topics in the telecommunications area at that time.

In its 3rd edition, in 2009, the workshop was held at Ericsson's headquarters in São Paulo. 56 technical papers, written by researchers from Canada, Dubai, Australia, USA, France, Italy, Germany and Brazil, covered the main subjects of the telecommunications world. The keynote speakers were Dr. Pascal Lorenz, from the University of Haute-Alsace/France, Dr. Roberto Saracco, director of Future Centre/Telecom Italy and Dr. Otto Strobel, from the Esslingen University of Applied Sciences (FHTE)/Germany. The Technical Program Committee counted on the participation of professors from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering from Unicamp to organize the event. The IWT'09 was organized by Inatel in partnership with SBrT, IEEE-MG and Ericsson. CNPq and companies like Linear, Ativa and Sense cosponsored the event.