PEACHTREE CITY, GA – JULY 6, 2026 – The Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA) today announced that AJ Cooper, CEO and cofounder of Itera, will keynote PCB West 2026.

His keynote, “The Physical AI Boom Starts at the Circuit Level,” takes place Sept. 30 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

Itera, a new deep tech startup, has developed the world’s first “fluid” circuit board, which can rewire itself in real time. Built upon an electrowetting platform, the system replaces copper traces with reconfigurable liquid metal interconnects embedded in glass. When the design is updated digitally, the system reroutes the liquid metal traces to match the new design. The company says that this technology can make hardware iteration 1,000 times faster than the traditional PCB design process.

In his keynote, Cooper will discuss fluid PCB technology, its potential for accelerating development of AI infrastructure, and why he believes that hardware updates will eventually be as simple as a software update – triggered with the push of a button.

Cooper served as director of hardware engineering for Lyft and head of electrical engineering for Uber, as well as a director of engineering at Flex. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.S.E.E., both from the University of Virginia.

"AJ Cooper has a deep understanding of the fabrication and assembly issues designers face in trying to realize their novel ideas,” said Mike Buetow, president, PCEA. “Itera has developed a unique process for overcoming the up-to-now inherent obstacle that affects every designer and design engineer: in getting a printed circuit board design from a drawing board to a working prototype.”

PCB West will be held Sept. 29 – Oct. 2 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. The event includes a one-day exhibition on Sept. 30.

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