Tsinghua inaugurates new school for chip talent

A worker inspects auto chips at Anxin Electronic Technology Co in Chizhou, Anhui province. (Photo by Sheng Wenpeng/For China Daily)

Tsinghua University officially inaugurated its new school for integrated circuits on Thursday, striving to cultivate talents for the country's IC industry and make indigenous Chinese chips, according to a report from youth.cn.

Integrated circuits — the heart and brains of electronic products — are crucial to the development of the information technology industry. China's IC industry has been on track for high-speed growth in recent years, but its comparatively low technical level has hindered its move toward the high end of the value chain.

Thus, the Academic Degree Committee of the State Council and the Ministry of Education upgraded "Integrated circuit science and engineering" to a first-class discipline in January this year, in order to provide strong talent support to the country's IC industry.

The new school of integrated circuits, jointly built by Tsinghua's Department of Microelectronics and Nanoelectronics and the Department of Electronic Engineering, will also establish an interdisciplinary research center.

Certain graduates from the two departments have become leaders in the country's integrated circuits industry. For example, Zhao Haijun, co-CEO of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, and Dong Haoran, general manager of Huada Semiconductor, were both trained in the program.

Tsinghua has cultivated over 4,000 graduates, 3,000 postgraduates, and 500 Ph.D. graduates since the establishment of its semiconductor specialty in 1956. From 2016 to 2020, over 70 percent of gradates have entered the IC industry or related front-line scientific research, according to the report.