Funding of AED 35M to research on energy efficient electronics in Abu Dhabi

Date: 29/05/2013
The Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) have together launched the ATIC-SRC Center of Excellence for Energy Efficient Electronic Systems (ACE4S), to be hosted jointly in Abu Dhabi by Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, and Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. With a total funding of more than AED 35 million the research is going to be focused on developing energy efficient devices with research in energy harvesting, power management, sensor technologies and wireless communications networks.

“This center is a significant research milestone for Abu Dhabi, the UAE and the region,” said Sami Issa, Executive Director at ATIC. “ACE4S is a critical building block of our ecosystem strategy to help enable the development of homegrown talent in key areas of science and technology. Such talent development is essential as Abu Dhabi transitions into an innovation-based society as per the 2030 vision.”

“Over the past 30 years, SRC has successfully helped establish numerous university research centers and distributed more than $2 billion dollars in research funds in the United States; ACE4S role as our first international center reflects significantly on the quality of research we pursue,” said SRC President Larry Sumney. “The ACE4S Center has been established with valuable industry guidance from companies such as GLOBALFOUNDRIES, AMD, Applied Materials, Freescale, IBM, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Texas Instruments and Tokyo Electron (TEL) and will build on SRC-sponsored university research supporting 15 individual researchers in the UAE. Top semiconductor industry experts will oversee and serve as liaisons for each research task, and SRC will productively guide the overall research while also promoting strong student engagement—enabling us to identify areas of greatest need and foster the move of innovations from lab to market.”