As Taiwanese chip giant TSMC gears up to start production at its new fab in Kumamoto, Japan, it's training up new prospective Japanese engineering recruits at a university in southern Taiwan.
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00:00Studying semiconductors.
00:02Japanese student Mashita Ayane has traveled over 2,000 kilometers
00:06from her hometown in Saitama Prefecture
00:08to enroll at the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology
00:12in southern Taiwan, a school she chose because of its links
00:15to semiconductor giant TSMC.
00:18The chipmaker is funding her studies,
00:20and she hopes that if she works hard enough,
00:22by the end of the program she'll also have secured a job there.
00:25It's easy, but since it's in Chinese,
00:30it's difficult because I've never learned it before.
00:33The fully funded program is all part of the tech giant's efforts
00:36to train up its talent for its rapidly expanding business.
00:39TSMC just opened its first factory in Japan in February
00:43and is set to begin commercial production in the fourth quarter of this year.
00:47To meet its recruitment needs,
00:48TSMC signed a five-year agreement with the university
00:51to train up dozens of Japanese students each year.
00:54The school itself is kind of like a scholarship.
00:59We encourage them to come and study.
01:01We call it semiconductor students.
01:03These semiconductor students may be in other industries,
01:09maybe in packaging, maybe in testing,
01:12maybe in all kinds of different semiconductor industries.
01:16TSMC is hoping to expand the program
01:18to 90 Japanese students next year.
01:21TSMC has also announced plans to launch a similar program in Germany,
01:24where the company is building its first European fab,
01:27making sure their foreign subsidiaries have the key Taiwanese training
01:30that has made TSMC the world leader.
01:33Kama Sri and Tiffany Wong for Taiwan Plus.