Part of the Industry-Academia cooperation plan worth 100 billion won announced on August 8th

Planning on expanding cooperation to other Universities besides SNU

Samsung Electronics agreed on Industry-Academia cooperation with SNU for future human resource development in the field of semiconductors. 

On the 14th, Samsung Electronics held a signing ceremony for an Industry-Academia cooperation agreement, which aims for the advancement in the domestic semiconductor field and empowerment of future talents. It was held at SNU in the presence of major officials including Chan Wook Park, acting chancellor of SNU, and Ki Nam Kim, representative director of Samsung Electronics. Samsung Electronics announced on the 8th through the presentation, ‘Proposal on economy activation and job creation’, that it will invest 100 billion won as Industry-Academia funding. Starting from SNU, it is planning to expand its Industry-Academia cooperation to other domestic universities.

Samsung Electronics expanded the annual Industrial-Academic cooperation investment in domestic universities of this field to set up a foundation for qualitative growth of the domestic semiconductor ecosystem, and newly established the “Industrial-Academic Cooperation Center”, which is exclusively responsible for managing Industry-Academia programs. Three major streams were newly added for Industry-Academia cooperation: Supporting research in basic science such as physics, math, and chemistry; Hiring more professors and expanding Masters and PhD scholarships in the field of semiconductors; and providing Samsung Electronics’ advanced equipment infrastructure free of charge for semiconductor research. Current Industry-Academia cooperation program centered in College of Engineering will also be reinforced.

Semiconductors is the core industry in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, such as AI, 5G and IoT where manpower from various fields is needed. However, the annually decreasing number of semiconductors-related professors and students enrolled in Masters and PhD programs imposes difficulty in securing sufficient human resource. Ki Nam Kim, representative director of Samsung Electronics (concurrently head of Samsung Electronics Device Solution) said, “For the development of the semiconductor industry, it is important to activate academic research in universities as a basis and form an ecosystem that can sustainably empower talent. With the expansion of Industry-Academic cooperation, we expect to make contributions to the development of Korea’s science technology and semiconductor industry. 

Source: https://ee.snu.ac.kr/community/news?bm=v&bbsidx=47760
Translated by Kyungjin Lee, English Editor of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, jin11542@snu.ac.kr