National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) on Wednesday announced that it would team up with 10 of Taiwan’s largest tech firms to establish a semiconductor research college.
The college would be jointly operated with some of the larger companies in the sector, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp, the university said.
Semiconductor development — such as design processes, the physics and chemistry of materials, components technology, IC design and advanced packaging — would be the college’s focus, it added.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
“We’ve invited Lin Burn-jeng (林本堅), who is well-known for developing an industry-changing immersion lithography technique, to act as dean of the college,” university president Hocheng Hong (賀陳弘) said.
Since 2016, Lin has been a distinguished research chair professor at the university. He worked for IBM in the US before returning to Taiwan to work for TSMC.
The companies would collectively invest more than NT$130 million (US$4.64 million) per year in the college, which would also receive funding from the government.
Other Taiwanese backers are GlobalWafers Co, Unimicron Technology Corp, United Microelectronics Corp, Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp, Novatek Microelectronics Co and Nanya Technology Corp, while Japan’s Tokyo Electron and the US’ Micron Technology are also onboard.
“We expect to accept 80 master’s students and 20 doctoral students each year into the college, and we will be offering a lot of scholarship money,” the university said. “We would like to begin accepting applicants as early as next spring.”
The university hopes that the college’s programs “will open students’ eyes” to the interdisciplinary nature of semiconductor development, which includes information technology, physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, mathematics and other areas of study, Hocheng said.
Meanwhile, Lin said that the college would offer internationally competitive salaries to attract big-name teachers, including inviting industry elites to teach microcredit courses.
The college would also invite researchers from Academia Sinica and the US’ National Academy of Engineering, he added.
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