by Allenn Lowaton
In line with the thrust of MSU-IIT to be a research university, the Electronics Engineering (ECE) program has accepted the challenge. IIT’s ECE is the only ECE program throughout the Visayas and Mindanao region being recognized by CHED as Center of Excellence.
DOST-Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (PCIEERD) granted 25.5 million pesos to the program “µC-IC: Design of Microcontroller Integrated with Energy Harvesting and Power Management. The program will run for three (3) years from March 2017 to March 2020.
The program headed by Prof. Jefferson Hora (also the project 1 leader) has three (3) projects – microcontroller unit (project 1); power management unit (project 2); and energy harvesting unit (project 3). Prof. Allenn Lowaton and Prof. Chinet Mocorro – Overstreet are the project 2 and project 3 leaders, respectively.
The team is comprised of at least ten (10) research assistants; research staff; program and project leaders. The program will design (and have it fabricated in Taiwan) a single integrated circuit (IC) chip that can harvest energy from the ambient sources and perform vital functions for smart buildings, smart farming, risk reduction control and industrial applications, to name a few.
Moreover, CHED earlier this year granted the MicroLab an 8.5 million pesos research grant.
The Microelectronics faculty members, the MS Electrical Engineering students – Microelectronics track and all BSECE senior students are taking part in the 41 million-peso worth of research activities funded by the DOST-PCIEERD, CHED and USAID-STRIDE.
Currently, among HEIs in the entire country, it is only UP-Diliman and MSU-IIT that has a complete set of digital, analog and mixed signal integrated circuits design tools.
Topics : microelectronics electronics engineering DOST-PCIEERD grants CHED grants Hora Lowaton Overstreet