Alumni feature 2 - Dr Weixing Yu

In the continuing "Alumni feature" series, I have invited Dr Weixing Yu, a former post doctoral researcher at MISEC and now a Research Professor at the Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (University of Changchung, China) to answer our questions.



Weixing Yu (centre, red shirt) with his students

 MISEC BLOG: Hi Weixing, congratulations for your distinguished position under the scheme “100 Talents Program”! Could describe us your career and different projects after you got your PhD?

       After my Ph.D, I worked for APS (a singapore company) in IC-packaging industry. There, I was mainly in charge of Photolithography process for wafer bumping. Then two years later, I moved to Heriot-Watt Unversity to work in MISEC as a research association on project of '3-D Mintegration' to develop a flexible and cheap manufacturing method, i.e. Electrostatic Induced lithography Method. After three years of postdoc, I received a research professor position from CAS [Chinese Academy of Science] under the scheme of '100 talents program'. Under this program, I can have a start funding of 3million RMB. With this funding, I now have my own 1000 class clean room with an area of 100m2. For facilities, we have equipment to be able to do UV-LIGA process and we are now trying to buy more new equipment including e-beam evaporator, flip chip bonder, Ion-beam etching and so on. In the mean time, I am also undertaking two NSFC [Natural Science Fondation of China] projects and one MOST [Ministry of Science and Technology] project. 

MISEC BLOG: What do you prefer most in your current job?

    I will say 'freedom'. In my current job, I actually have chance to do any project which is interesting to me. Of course, it will depend on whether the funding is availabe to this project or not.

MISEC BLOG: Is the work atmosphere very different in China compared to UK?

    Definitely! People in my institute work very hard and we actually have no annual leave. We only have public holiday. I must say to work in UK is more relaxing and you even need to report to clean room manager Mark if you want to work over time in MISEC :).

MISEC BLOG: Do the Chinese universities recruit a lot of overseas workforce?

    Not really. Chinese government is trying to attract more and more talents from overseas, but only limit to those with Chinese nationality, like me. But I can see the policy is changing. More and More Masters from overseas every year come to chinese universities and institutes for different kind of cooperation, like Prof.Marc Desmulliez. 

MISEC BLOG: And finally, what is the current tendency or trend in MEMS activities in China?

   In my opinion, the trend for MEMS in China is: 1) Applying MEMS technology for biology and health application; 2) Shrinking the size of MEMS to develop NEMS for more new applications.

Thank you very much for this and all the best! 

Weixing has also reminded me of the coming ICOME 2011, International Conference on Micro/Nano Optical Engineering, which will be held in Changchun, in June of this year ! The deadline for abstract submission is the end of the month (30th of April).