One of the six members of the Czech Semiconductor Center consortium is the JIC innovation agency, which played a significant role in the establishment of the institution and is an indispensable part of the entire process. David Uhlir, architect of the innovation ecosystem and deputy director of JIC, told us how it all began and what JIC’s mission is in the whole mechanism. The interview was written by Jana Novotna for the university magazine News at BUT.
When did you first notice increased attention being paid to semiconductors at JIC?
About three or four years ago, we noticed the first signs that Taiwanese companies were starting to visit us to prospect for possible locations for the expansion of chip production for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Shortly thereafter, CzechInvest arranged a visit by a Taiwanese delegation, which was also attended by other institutions with which we had previously been in contact. There were representatives from the Brno University of Technology, specifically FEEC and CEITEC, and from industry, microscopists from Thermo Fisher Scientific and Tescan, Michal Lorenc from onsemi, Jarek Dolak from SVCS, and Stanislav Cerny, then still with SmarterInstruments. After the meeting, we agreed that it would be useful to continue meeting even without the Taiwanese, and we began to meet once a month.
Something was already happening at the European level, with the European Chips Act being created, and our meetings gradually gave rise to specific projects and initiatives. Jiri Haze at FEEC began to develop curricula in collaboration with onsemi and later with microscopists from Tescan and Thermo Fisher Scientific. We received various drafts of the Chips Act, which made it clear that there were plans to establish competence centers across EU member states, and this gradually became one of our group’s activities. At that stage, we invited our colleagues from CTU in Prague to join us, and because the project was already starting to grow and we needed our activities to have a formal legal form, Stanislav Černý founded the National Semiconductor Cluster. A consortium of six players for the future competence center was established quite smoothly.
What role does JIC play in the competence center?
There are basically three roles. From the beginning, JIC’s main role has been to support start-ups and small and medium-sized companies in the field of microelectronics – so that it is not limited to chip manufacturing in the narrowest sense of the word. There may also be companies such as NenoVision, which focuses on unique microscopy with applications in chip manufacturing and quality control, but also elsewhere. Or DynaNIC, a spin-off from FIT, which makes programmable gate arrays, known by the English abbreviation FPGA. These are the types of projects we already have here, and we want to see more of them. Our role is to support companies of this type across the Czech Republic and provide them with consulting support from experts who are able to develop them both technologically and, in particular, commercially.
The second related role is to support student entrepreneurship. Since March 2025, a Ph.D. Academy course has been running in Brno for doctoral students and postdocs who already have some research history, are working on things that could have commercial potential, and want to see if it makes sense to start a business. In Brno, we are the content provider for the course, which is primarily attended by students and academics from Brno schools, but also by employees of the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the Academy of Sciences – these could potentially spawn new start-ups, which we will be able to support in the further growth of their business. We are trying to be more active in recruiting projects related to semiconductors, and something similar should be happening in Prague at the Czech Technical University for the Czech Republic.
The third role of JIC is complementary to start-up support and is called Access to Finance in the jargon. JIC addresses how projects can be financed, whether through grants, because the Chips Act offers special opportunities for semiconductor companies, or through capital investments, the so-called Chips Fund, which is able to invest very interesting amounts in the most promising European companies. These are companies that are scaling up from start-ups directly into international business with a focus on the semiconductor industry.
What is new or most challenging for you compared to the past?
It has prompted us to focus more on where ideas in this area can arise, so it is an incentive for us to collaborate more closely with universities. One of the things that is already starting to happen within the consortium is that people at BUT are tasked with actively seeking out commercially interesting ideas—something we didn’t have before. I am grateful that we can legitimately demand results from these people, and I hope that after a while it will work automatically. The point is to have a few successful examples that attract attention, and then others will spread the word among themselves.
It is also very challenging to align the expectations of individual consortium members. We already knew some of them from the preparatory phase, but not others, so we are finding out who is involved, especially at universities, and clarifying what is expected of whom. We believe that we will understand each other.
Why was the competence center established in Brno?
From the beginning, the focus of this activity was in Brno, but I always emphasized that it would not be possible without the Czech Technical University and that the center must have a nationwide scope. It turned out that cooperation with the people from CTU is excellent, in a spirit of mutual respect. It is essential that we learn to work well together in a partner network. The European Commission has the ambition to make everything work properly across Europe, so if we are not particularly good at something and France or Germany are better at it, we must learn to reach out to them for their expertise. This is, of course, an even greater ambition than the need for similar connections between people and network cooperation on a national scale. But I believe it will work, it just takes time.
Is there anything you can already be happy about?
I am happy with how the Ph.D. Academy has taken off. In the first run, we have ten projects, all of which have quite a lot of potential, with interesting research results, even though there is still a long way to go before commercialization. And I am pleased that four of the ten are related to microelectronics. It would be great if we could maintain this ratio in future runs. A lot will depend on the work within the universities, on how successful they are in finding and bringing out good ideas – this is mainly up to the academics, but we will assist them in this. Ultimately, it is very important how the leaders of the individual research groups approach this. Whether they tell students: this is interesting, it may have commercial potential, go and work on it, or whether it will just result in another conference paper. So I hope that the project will also help us to slowly change the culture and mindset about what these results can be used for.
I am also very pleased that semiconductors have become a hot topic, that people are talking about them, and that as a result, the number of applicants for the field has doubled. I believe that when attention is focused on something and systematic care is taken, change will come. And I think this is a good example that can be replicated in other fields.
Source: News at BUT (Jana Novotna)
Photo credit: JIC
