Recognition honors Otte’s decades of innovation and leadership as Promex marks more than 50 years of advancing microelectronics manufacturing and packaging

SANTA CLARA, Calif. Oct. 8, 2026 -- Richard ( Dick) Otte, CEO of Promex Industries Inc., has received the 2026 Founder’s Award from the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS), recognizing his significant technical and leadership contributions to the microelectronics packaging industry and his role in building Promex into an advanced microelectronics manufacturing company serving some of the world’s most demanding applications.

Founded in Silicon Valley in 1975, Promex has now spent more than 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, guiding its transformation as electronic products have become dramatically smaller, more powerful and complex. Under his leadership, the company has acquired three companies, expanded its workforce and facilities, invested in advanced manufacturing and cleanroom capabilities, developed expertise in mixed-technology assembly and medical-device manufacturing, and built a manufacturing model capable of taking highly complex devices from early process development and prototype builds into production.

Otte holds more than 75 patents spanning materials, manufacturing processes, and electronic packaging strategies and has participated in industry road mapping efforts through such organizations as IPC, iNEMI, ITRS, HIR, and the MIT Micro  Photonic Center Optical Roadmap.

He is also a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chairs the Industrial Advisory Board of MIT's Electronic Photonic Packaging Laboratory, helping connect emerging research with the practical challenges of manufacturing and commercialization.

“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, Promex president. “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 recognizes both sides of that legacy.”

Building a Company Around Increasingly Complex Electronics

The evolution of Promex reflects a larger transformation in microelectronics manufacturing toward smaller devices, advanced packaging, and heterogeneous integration -- bringing separately manufactured electronic and non-electronic components and functions together into compact, highly integrated assemblies.

Promex combines conventional microelectronics with sensors, MEMS, optics, mechanical components, actuators, microfluidics, and chemistry. Such systems require manufacturing capabilities that extend well beyond traditional assembly and packaging.

This is particularly important in medical and biotechnology applications, where miniaturized electronics may need to coexist with biological materials, optical components, fluidics, and sensors while meeting tight thermal, dimensional, reliability, and quality requirements.

“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,” said Otte. “That change has fundamentally altered electronics manufacturing. It is also what makes this such an exciting time to be in this industry.”

From Silicon Valley Manufacturer to Advanced Integration Partner

Promex's expansion has included engineering, process-development, advanced packaging, inspection, and production capabilities. The acquisition of QP Technologies, formerly Quik-Pak, further expanded Promex's semiconductor packaging capabilities and the range of technologies available to customers in the med tech and life sciences industries.

Promex has a hybrid manufacturing model: combining the process discipline, documentation, and repeatability expected of a production manufacturer with the flexibility and engineering collaboration often required to develop products that have never been manufactured before. That model has become increasingly relevant as emerging products combine technologies with very different manufacturing requirements. A single assembly may include components requiring micron-level alignment alongside temperature-sensitive chemistry, fragile optics, MEMS devices, flexible substrates, or other materials that cannot tolerate conventional electronic assembly processes.

About Promex Industries Inc.

Since 1975, Promex Industries Inc. has provided advanced microelectronics manufacturing and packaging solutions for demanding applications. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Promex supports customers across medical and biotechnology, aerospace and defense, semiconductor and other high-reliability markets with capabilities spanning process development, advanced packaging, heterogeneous integration, SMT assembly, inspection and production manufacturing. Promex works with customers to move complex technologies from development and prototype builds into reliable, scalable production. For more information, visit promex-ind.com.