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ETTC Teams with IMSC on Taiwan Multimedia Industry Plan
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-  By Marty Zeller
ETTC 

ETTC assisted USC's Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) in preparation and presentation of a strategic plan for developing Taiwan's multimedia industry. The plan was delivered to Taiwanese officials at a workshop held in Taipei in October 2000. Isaac Maya, IMSC's Director of Industry and Technology Transfer Programs, explained that "the goal of the strategic plan is to help Taiwan increase its networked multimedia industry from a market scale of nearly three-fourths of a billion dollars today to $10.6 billion in five years. The strategic plan includes a series of recommendations to achieve that goal. Among other things the plan recommends that the Taiwanese:

Key provisions of the SBIR reauthorization legislation include:

  • Adopt a global mentality and adapt lessons learned from other countries to the Taiwanese situation

  • Use technology roadmaps to guide selection of future Internet technologies and applications
  • Participate in the international standards development community
  • Initiate student education and workforce training programs based on projected needs
  • Use multimedia and distance learning for effective education and training
  • Form Taiwanese university-industry partnerships
  • Work to establish favorable laws and an underlying regulatory infrastructure

150 senior industry executives, academics and government officials attended the one-day workshop. Executive Director Ken Dozier represented ETTC at the workshop. Dozier addressed workshop attendees on the subject of technology, applications and global analysis. IMSC Director Chrysostomos L. (Max) Nikias also spoke on "The Future of Immersipresence," IMSC's vision for the three-dimensional future of the Internet. The workshop "was a case of optimal synergy between researchers and practitioners. The business community in Taiwan saw both perspectives and reacted positively" reported Dozier.

IMSC is a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center at USC. Established in 1996, IMSC's vision is to bring new approaches and goals to academic engineering research and education, forging vital, enhanced links between the university and the industry. NSF recently approved a five-year renewal of IMSC as the Foundation's only Engineering Research Center devoted to multimedia and Internet technologies. Since its inception IMSC has brought in nearly $50 million from its sponsors at NSF and from other organizations, including various foundations, state and federal governmental agencies and laboratories and private sector corporations. ETTC has collaborated with IMSC on a variety of projects over the past several years, including:

  • Mentoring IMSC faculty and researchers in preparation for seeking start-up financing to launch small businesses based on technologies developed at IMSC
  • Conducting market research and assisting in business plan development on behalf of prospective start-up spinoffs from IMSC
  • Identifying and hiring suitable student interns with appropriate business skill sets to help with business start-up issues (in collaboration with the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the USC Marshall School of Business
  • Promoting commercialization of IMSC technologies via ETTC's web-based Technology Catalog at http://ettc.usc.edu/catalog.html

For further information, contact Marty Zeller at (213) 743-2927 or zeller@usc.edu.

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