Taiwan tapping into UC's ICT strengths

Taiwan tapping into UC's ICT strengths

Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), which has helped that country become a world leader in semiconductors, personal computers and other technologies, is looking at tapping into the University of Canterbury’s ICT strengths.

ITRI, which has seven laboratories in four centres with 6,000 staff and annual revenue of over US$500million, creates three to five new companies each year. Its President, Dr Johnsee Lee, has visited UC and sees significant potential for collaboration.

“In the hi-tech area Taiwan is much more hardware oriented and we are not as good in software applications and content. And those are the areas that Canterbury has a lot of strengths,” Dr Lee says. 

“I think that’s an area that we are very interested in collaborating on. We have to go back and digest what we have learned and we will send a delegation back for more detail. But we would very much like to leverage the strengths of Canterbury in the ICT area and some of the biomedical applications.

 “We have set aside a certain portion of funding for international collaboration. The key is to identify the right area that can pick up the ball and run.”

Dr Lee has met with the CEO of the University’s commercialisation company, Canterprise, the Director of NZi3, the national ICT Innovation Institute based at UC, and various UC researchers.

Canterprise CEO Raiyo Nariman says ITRI is looking to collaborate on research with commercial potential.

“Half of Taiwan’s wealth has effectively been built through ITRI so they very clearly understand marketplace positioning. ITRI has spun out companies that manufacture 95 percent of the world’s hard drives, 90 percent of the world’s USBs and on and on it goes.

“So they’re looking at working with parties on applied research. Products to market is very much what they are about.”

ends

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