Education Weeks in Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi, the capitol of United Arab Emirates (UAE), has a vibrant academic scene with respect to microelectronics. The founder of UAE, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, was convinced that, "the best investment of our wealth is in creating cultured and educated citizens. We have to be swift and make our progress in education faster than our progress in any other field." UAE makes serious investments for its future after the oil industry; the state fund Mubadala Development Company completely owns the number two pure-play foundry, GLOBALFOUNDRIES. This is the reason why the Cadence Academic Network and three universities in Abu Dhabi decided to provide a series of workshops to students and professors of the UAE universities. Each participating university committed a number of seats for attendees from other universities. The start was given by Abu Dhabi University (ADU) with an introduction day on January 24. Beside presentations from the Cadence Academic Network about the future of microelectronics and trends in EDA software development, Dr. Riad Kanan, associate professor of electrical and electronics engineering at ADU, encouraged the attending students to study microelectronics.   

Professor Dr. Ibrahim Elfadel from MASDAR Insitute of Science and Technology delivered an overview of academic IoT projects in UAE. One of the most exciting projects was certainly the transmission of electrical signals using human skin as a transfer medium with a speed of several MBit/sec. This is required for collecting information of weight-measuring sensors, which can be integrated in the shoes or socks of the user and accumulated in a PDA, which transfers the information to the medical staff in order to enable continuous weight measurement of the patient.

The next five days were occupied by a Virtuoso Front-to-Back Workshop, delivered by Firas Barakat, a Cadence engineer.

The next workshops at KUSTAR and MASDAR universities will take place later in the year, with separate announcements. But already, after the first workshop, the benefits of having shared workshops is very visible, since it makes collaboration between different universities as well as between the universities in the region and Cadence much stronger.

Anton Klotz