Lord Sainsbury opened the first EPPIC Faraday Partnership Seminar on Electronics and Photonics Packaging at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan on 8 March 2002.
This successful event was organised by TWI, the lead organisation in EPPIC, and the DTI to promote the importance of packaging technology and the significant background knowledge and industrial potential in the UK for collaboration.It was attended by over 100 people.
The TWI/EPPIC seminar consisted of a series of presentations by David Pedder and Norman Stockham both of TWI, on international benchmarking, roadmaps and specific opto-electronic packaging technology briefings. This was followed byUK industry presentations on collaboration opportunities from Martin Goosey (Shipley Europe UK), Kevin Ford (Optical Micro Devices) and David Wilkes (Microsharp Ltd).
During his visit to ITRI and the TWI/EPPIC Seminar, Lord Sainsbury was introduced to the Boeing/TWI/ITRI technology transfer programme on lead-free soldering by Shih-Hsien Wu (ITRI) and Norman Stockham (TWI), research and industrialexperts to transfer Pb-free solder paste technology to Taiwanese Industry.
Lord Sainsbury's seminar presentation
Lord Sainsbury and Professor Lieu being shown the results of the TWI/ITRI technology transfer programme on Pb-free solder pastes by Norman Stockham (TWI) and Shih-Hsien Wu (ITRI) During his introduction Lord Sainsbury spoke of optoelectronics as one of the new wave of key technologies underpinning the knowledge economy in the UK which is being fuelled by the dramatic increase in demand for digitalbandwidth.
He emphasised the UK's world class university, science and manufacturing base in optoelectronics and its background in innovation. UK Government firmly believes that investment in science and technology is fundamental to our futurecompetitiveness and, with this in mind, has substantially increased the science budgets since 1998.
Industry exploitation and knowledge transfer is very important and in this respect he has recently launched £30M worth of industry/university collaborative projects on optical systems and displays. Faraday Partnerships offer away of enabling businesses and researchers in specific fields of technology to work together to bring new products and processes to the market.
One such partnership, the EPPIC project led by TWI, is a recognition of the fundamental importance of packaging technologies in the electronics and photonics sectors and its impact on product and company viability.
Earlier government support for optical technology has helped to enhance and maintain the UK's position as the prime European location for R&D, design and manufacture of optoelectronics components and systems. UK Government iskeen to promote collaboration and joint ventures with organisations outside the UK, and he hopes Taiwanese companies will consider the UK as a source of technology and collaboration.
