The DATE Young People Programme (YPP) is a track designed to support the career development of young DATE attendees and to create networking opportunities with sponsoring companies and academic and research centres.

The DATE YPP includes as major activities:

• A Panel on career perspectives, offering insights into various career paths in industry, academia, and research.
• A Career Fair, during which sponsoring companies, universities, and research centres present open positions and share their working culture. The fair is followed by an informal networking session, allowing attendees to exchange contacts and engage in open discussions.
• A PhD Forum where PhD Students showcase their research and get meaningful feedback from both academy experts and industry representatives.
• A range of complementary educational activities, including the University Fair where students can interact with attendees presenting their work and demos.

For detailed information to apply to YPP initiatives, please refer to the DATE 2026 CFP: https://www.date-conference.com/call-for-papers#ypp

The DATE 2026 YPP students may apply for free student registration and for travel grants. Information will be available soon.

Panel on Future Career Perspectives

This panel discusses various career paths to help young researchers get a clearer idea about possibilities, necessary skills, and typical job profiles either in the academic world or in the industry. The panel hosts people working in academia or research centres, startup founders, and industry representatives with different job profiles (e.g., marketing, technical experts, team leaders). The goal is to encourage discussion and questions from the audience to delve into the characteristics of the different paths.

Participation is open to all DATE 2026 attendees and does not require a preliminary registration.

Career Fair

The Career Fair is a channel to prepare for future careers for younger academic enthusiasts, and to advertise new and upcoming open positions in universities, research centres, and industry.

The Career Fair will include two main activities:

• Academia: PhD students, master students and early researchers can discover new and upcoming academic research initiatives and open positions for PhD/Postdoc (and more).
• Industry: PhD students, master students and early researchers can discover the latest trends, the work environment and culture, and the open job positions in the companies sponsoring DATE, to enlarge their network and find job opportunities!

This session consists of two moments:

• A Presentation Session, during which sponsoring companies, universities and research centres present themselves and are open to questions on their ongoing activities and their workplace.
• A Speed Dating Session, an informal networking event during which students and early researchers can talk to HRs from the companies to ask questions, leave a CV, or plan interviews and future contact.

University Fair

The University Fair (formerly known as the University Booth) is a platform for disseminating mature academic research activities, particularly demonstrations and prototypes that are ready for transfer to other academic or industrial units.

Student Teams Presentations

The Student Teams Presentations aims at bringing together University Student Teams involved in international competitions and personnel from EDA and microelectronic companies. The Teams can present their activities, success stories and challenges, and to receive funding and support by the companies for their future activities.

PhD Forum

The PhD Forum is a poster session hosted by the European Design Automation Association (EDAA), the ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA), and the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA).

The forum is a great opportunity for PhD students (who have completed their PhD thesis within the last 12 months or who are close to completing their thesis) to present their work to a broad audience in the system design and design automation community from both industry and academia. The forum may also help students to establish contacts for entering the job market. In addition, representatives from industry and academia get a glance at the state-of-the-art in system design and design automation.

Sponsorship for registration and travel

The DATE 2026 YPP students may apply for free student registration to DATE 2026. Such grants are funded by the participating companies and the sponsor societies (e.g., IEEE CEDA, ACM SIGDA, and EDAA).

Requirements for sponsorship and process

Applicants must be full-time students in EDA, microelectronics, or an adjacent field. If accepted, you must commit to actively participating in the programme in Verona, Italy 20 - 22 April 2026. Participation includes attending YPP events, especially industry and academic careers fairs, as well as DATE 2026 sessions. We welcome students from all over Europe and from all backgrounds.

A jury will carefully review the applications and select DATE 2026 YPP participants. We especially welcome applications from women and underrepresented groups.

If your application is accepted, you will receive a personalized registration link from the conference organization. If you are not selected, you may register via the online registration form. Sponsorship applicants accept that their information will be shared with the sponsoring companies.

Instructions to submit your applications will be available soon.

Please note that acceptances for this sponsorship program will be communicated in multiple rounds. This is because the availability of funding may become confirmed progressively.

If you do not receive an acceptance in the first round, please be aware that additional acceptances may follow as further funding becomes available.