DOST – UPEEE want to expand RP's
pool of high-tech experts to be competitive

By Janet Rosalie Anne H. Polita
MediaCore, PCASTRD

Following regional and global recovery trends, the country's semiconductor and electronics industry posted the largest share in total exports at 66.4% as of May 2004.  Government leaders and academicians want such surging export performance to expand.

Key to ensuring sustained industry growth is the availability of highly trained human resource.

The University of the Philippines Diliman Electronics and Electrical Engineering Department is working towards this direction by enhancing its graduate programs in electronics and implementation of innovative programs such as the VCTI: Microelectronics Project.

The Department of Science and Technology supports the project designed to improve the graduate education of universities particularly in microelectronics including scholarships.  DOST's Philippine Council for Advanced Science and Technology Research and Development monitors the project.

Project leader and UP-EEE Professor Louis P. Alarcon said that the project is the academe's contribution in creating a mass of engineers with graduate degrees.  “This is what the industry needs to get to the next level – more innovation, design, and creativity through research.”

Through the project, UP EEE established partnership with the University of California at Berkeley to back the student's capability in innovation and in developing new technologies.  Some UCB courses like advanced digital and advanced analog integrated circuit design have been integrated in the department's existing UP-EEE graduate courses.  The courses were initially handled by UCB faculty and consultants and attended mostly by UPEEE faculty and graduate students.

The UCB courses are now taught by UP professors.   “This has opened the door for further collaboration between UCB and UPEEE,” Alarcon said.

The courses keep UP-EEE graduate students abreast with latest information on research that make them at par with foreign counterparts.

“This project is also our way of contributing to the national innovation system.  We need to develop a critical mass of researchers [who] will be capable of designing and manufacturing electronic materials, he added.

 Stiff global competition among electronics products and the emergence of China as strong rival for availability of cheap labor, the local electronics industry have to venture into original product design and manufacture to increase value-added and sustain its competitive position.

“A more aggressive approach should be taken by the academe, industry as well as the government in intensifying and promoting the program and projects initially made for the electronics industry,” Alarcon said.

Meanwhile, PCASTRD has also been supporting R&D projects that would benefit the semiconductor and electronics sector mostly conducted by UP National Institute of Physics.