The Department of Electronic Engineering at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has strengthened its teaching and research work by establishing the CityU-Microchip Centre, with full support from Microchip Technology Inc. (Microchip).

CityU is the first academic partner of Microchip in Hong Kong under an agreement signed with the company. In this collaboration, Microchip will provide resources including development tools, software and course materials. These resources will be integrated into the education programmes at the CityU-Microchip Centre (the Centre) to provide teaching support for laboratory and project courses in areas related to microcontrollers and other embedded technology.

A ceremony held on 14 March marked the official opening of the Centre. It was officiated by Mr Joe Krawczyk, Vice President, Asia Pacific Sales, Microchip Technology Inc., Professor Gregory Raupp, Vice-President (Research and Technology), CityU, and Professor Man Kim-fung, Head of the Department of Electronic Engineering, CityU.

Speaking at the ceremony, Professor Raupp thanked Microchip for its generous support. “With the advent of the 4-year undergraduate curriculum, CityU has devised the Discovery-enriched Curriculum to encourage students to discover and innovate. The establishment of the Centre comes at the right time to promote students’ appreciation for the power of cutting-edge technologies and to motivate their passion for knowledge and discovery in the high technology arena,” Professor Raupp said.

“We first started working together with CityU in June last year, when the agreement was reached to set up the facility that we are here to open today, the CityU-Microchip Centre. I want to pay tribute to everyone, both within CityU and among my own colleagues, who has worked so hard since that time to turn our vision into a reality,” said Mr Krawczyk.

“Today’s facility and our ongoing collaboration will enable Microchip to work with and to support some of the next generation of leading engineers,” he added.

Professor Man said, with the support of Microchip, the Centre will facilitate student learning as well as provide relevant training for Hong Kong and mainland engineers.

“Our partnership with Microchip will prepare our students to practice professionally and to excel. The Centre is part of our on-going efforts to collaborate with the industry to nurture a new generation of well-equipped professionals to meet the needs of society,” Professor Man said.

The Centre will strengthen its microprocessor-related courses for electronic engineering students using Microchip products that enhance learning and fine-tune practical skills. Students can make use of these resources to develop microcontroller and wireless sensor network applications in their final-year projects.

The Centre will also facilitate research and industrial project activities in the Department. It will offer students, staff and engineers intensive training courses on up-to-date technologies in microcontroller systems for solving practical engineering problems. In addition, application notes will be developed to serve as a manual for the features of Microchip PIC^? microcontrollers and provide solutions to practical engineering applications.