WaferCatalyst — Towards promotion of IC design in the middle east using virtual community approach

WaferCatalyst is an initiative of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) aimed at promoting integrated circuit (IC) design and related technologies in Saudi Arabia and the surrounding regions. KACST has undertaken a virtual community building approach utilizing conventional methods along with a fully custom web based portal for the complete automation of services and as a tool for community capacity building. The portal supports features like E-Learning, support services, video conferencing, order management and secure file transfer. These features are used to achieve high efficiency in providing services, creating an online community and to provide a mechanism for knowledge transfer and sharing. The results of this technology based approach in the second year are already very encouraging with participation from more than fourteen universities and organizations from four countries and a large number of users have signed up and are utilizing the system, thus contributing to the development of the ecosystem.