UT Dallas and South Korean Consortium Plan Semiconductor
Research Center
April 19, 2007 – The University of Texas at Dallas has signed a memorandum of understanding that calls for a South Korean consortium to invest up to $8 million in the next four years to establish and fund a semiconductor research center at the university’s Erik Jonsson School of Engineering & Computer Science.
Participating in the signing of a memorandum of understanding for the semiconductor research center at UT Dallas were, from left, Dr. Bob Helms, dean of the UT Dallas school of engineering; Dr. Hobson Wildenthal, UT Dallas executive vice president and provost; Nam-Jeung Kim, director of South Korea’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy; and Hyeong Joon Kim, director of Seoul’s Consortium of Semiconductor Advanced Research.
The research center is expected to explore nano-electronics, nano-bio-info-fusion technology (a synthesis of the biological, physical and information sciences) and other next-generation advances intended to enable semiconductors to continue their decades-old march toward ever smaller, faster and more energy-efficient designs.
The memorandum of understanding is the largest of three that Seoul’s Consortium of Semiconductor Advanced Research (COSAR) signed with U.S. universities this month. Similar agreements were announced with Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.
Each institution will be responsible for exploring one facet of future semiconductor technology: Stanford will examine manufacturing processes, UC Berkeley will look at chip design, and UT Dallas will delve into new materials and equipment for future-generation chips.
“We’re confident this project could lead to developments that revolutionize the semiconductor industry,” said Dr. Bob Helms, dean of the Jonsson school. “And we’re looking forward to working closely with our collaborators at Stanford and UC Berkeley.”
The semiconductor materials expertise and facilities that enabled the Jonsson school to win the award have only coalesced at the school in the past three years, added Moon Kim, who is a professor of electrical engineering and director of the Nano-Characterization Facility at UT Dallas and will serve as coordinator of the university’s semiconductor research center. He and Jiyoung Kim, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the Jonsson school, played the central role of working with their South Korean counterparts to bring about the overall project.
In addition to research, the initial agreement calls for UT Dallas to form a strategic alliance of organizations focused on commercializing advances that come out of the research. And as UT Dallas researchers and COSAR begin working closely together in the months ahead, the Metroplex Technology Business Council is expected to play a part in encouraging South Korean semiconductor companies to open offices in North Texas.
Moon Kim expects to see a final agreement in place soon, and he intends for the project to get under way July 1.
Official announcement from South Korea’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy
