ITRI touts technological collaboration with the US

INDUSTRY UPGRADES: Institute president Chang Pei-zen said it is facilitating the development of critical mineral refining and copackaged optics in Taiwan

• By Lin I-ru and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

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The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is spearheading Taiwan’s drive to enhance technological collaboration with the US, Japan and Europe in critical fields, institute president Chang Pei-zen (張培仁) said in an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) published yesterday.

Global relationships in technology are valuable to Taiwan’s development of uncrewed systems, critical minerals and optical communications, Chang said.

The institute is also cooperating with the private sector to spur industry upgrades across the economy, he said.

Industrial Technology Research Institute president Chang Pei-zen attends an interview in an undated photohgraph

Photo: Yu An-ting, Taipei Times

It played a key role in Taiwan-US collaboration in the Green UAS cybersecurity and supply chain compliance certification program, he said.

The US had expected that it would take 11 months to transfer the certification to Taiwan, but the ITRI’s contribution allowed the process to be completed in five months, he said.

The institute with the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ assistance is also facilitating the development of technology to refine critical minerals, aimed at meeting 50 percent of domestic demand for rare earths by 2030, he said.

The ITRI has established experimental assembly lines for that project on site, which would be scaled up as the program goes forward, Chang said.

The institute is also working closely with Japanese private-sector partners to develop high-efficiency converters for use in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in exchange for transferring base stations and private networks to Japan, he said.

The cooperation is helping Taiwanese and Japanese enterprises work together to integrate optical communication components and systems, he said.

The institute has a decades-long relationship with Lithuania’s laser industry, which produces the emitters for Taiwan’s laser sector, Chang said.

France and the Netherlands are partners in the ITRI’s bid to develop copackaged optics, an emergent technology believed to have tremendous value to AI data centers, he said.

The institute is also cooperating with European satellite manufacturers to improve Taiwan’s telecommunications capabilities and working with the UK to develop 3D printing tech that could be used in multi-band base station antennas, he said.

Asked about unevenness in technology upgrades in the Taiwanese economy, Chang said sectors “closer to wind” would naturally be faster to adapt to new technologies.

The ITRI is not only helping the nation’s strategic industries to stay on the cutting edge of global developments, but also promoting the distribution of technologies in small and medium-sized industries and traditional industries, he said.

The integration of Taiwanese plastic injection molding and precision machining into semiconductor supply chains is a success story for the ITRI’s efforts to upgrade the nation’s economy, he said.

The institute is mulling changing its strategy of developing, transferring and applying new technologies in sequence, Chang said.

Instead, it is starting the technological research and development process by first interviewing end-users about their needs, as the institute has been doing with robotics, he said.

Every new technology the institute develops in connection with the sector begins with interviewing 10 or more enterprises in the industry, which greatly facilitates the process of translating technology into a commercial product, Chang said.

The ITRI is taking part in the government’s “hundred industries” initiative to help distribute AI technology to traditional industries and small businesses, as the institute carries out its own digitization, he said.