By Amorn Jiraseree-amornkun

R10 Young Professional Meetup in Bangkok was held in Metropolitan Electricity Authority of Thailand Pleonchit Head Quarter on March 4th, 2016, 1.00 – 4.00 PM. There were several core members from universities and private sectors attending the event. The meeting began with the welcome speech and review of Thailand’s Young Professionals activities during the past 3 years by Dr. Amorn Jiraseree-amornkun, Chairman of Young Professionals Affinity Group of Thailand section. It was also a good opportunity to elect a new chairman and Dr. Kriangkrai Sooksood from faculty of engineering, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, was chosen to lead Thailand Young Professionals for the next 2 years.

Then there was a talk about “Revitalizing Thailand Electronic Design Industry Through Undergrad Design Challenge Approach” from Karn Opasjumruskit, a member of the technical staff at Silicon Craft Technology Co. Ltd., a successful local integrated circuit design company, and vice president of Thai Embedded Systems Association (TESA).

Karn explained that, though Thailand has a big electronic manufacturing industry which is responsible for 23% of export goods and 11% of country’s GDP, it is hard to find a large electronic design company in Thailand. Every year, electrical and electronic engineers graduate and continue to work in the industries mainly involved in production and sales support functions. Therefore, the career path and motivation for studying electronic design has become less obvious to the undergraduate students. As a less number of graduates joining the electronic design field, it is harder to justify the requirement to setting up a design company or division. It has turned into a lock-up situation for Thailand as it can’t add more value to the electrical and electronic products it produce. Nevertheless, there is still a hope. It is shown through a pilot project that if students could be inspired early and given an opportunity to design a small project during their free time, the chances of getting more students into the design field is higher. Silicon Craft Technology Co. Ltd. in collaboration with a few IC design laboratories has successfully inspired and developed a group of more than 10 top IC-design students via a set of activities that use design challenge as a key.

Later on, Nivas Ravichandran, R10 Young Professionals coordinator, presented some useful information about IEEE R10 Young Professionals activities, people and supports. Several fruitful discussions happened during the presentation. The main topic was about the benefits of IEEE membership and the improvements that Thai members do expect the most from IEEE membership. Being a part of the largest professional network, conference fee discounts and IEEE publications database access are some obvious reasons to join IEEE. However, travelling expense is a crucial obstacle to attend the top conferences aboard and expanding the network. It would be supportive if major conferences could consider offering travel grants to authors of the qualified papers from developing countries. Nivas suggested that it is possible to directly contact the conference chairperson to ask for supports or special offers. Another option is, contacting the local IEEE chapters to see whether they have reserved funds from the revenue generated through admission fees of any technical workshops they conducted, which could be used to support Young Professional members.

Final challenging topic was about the lack of value been put on by the Thai government and industries towards IEEE, which is not the case in countries like the USA or India. This has created limitations in adequate support and also is the reason for the small number of IEEE members in Thailand. The mission of Young Professionals – Thailand, would be to expand the network of Young Professional members and work closely with productive local chapters to conduct more interesting activities. This will help to highlight the importance of IEEE Thailand section and will bring the attention from young electrical engineers and eventually the government and industries.

Written by,

Amorn Jiraseree-amornkun