Qualcomm's global president, Cristiano Amon, was at Unicamp this Wednesday (14) to give the inaugural class at the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Amon is a former Unicamp student studying Electrical Engineering and came to the University amid a wave of exposure for the company in the media due to President Donald Trump's veto of the Qualcomm acquisition process by the company Broadcom.
Cristiano Amon's talk focused on transformations in industry and technological changes in society in the services sector, which will be the result of the next generation of mobile communication brought by 5G technology. The executive highlighted the main characteristics of the technology that will allow the expansion of IoT (internet of things) applications in the industrial sector and other sectors. “5G brings the possibility of unlimited speed and data connected to the cloud and mainly link reliability, which makes it possible to operate more critical services via mobile connection, such as surgeries and machine control in industry”, said Amon.
Amon commented that Qualcomm has already carried out two tests in cities in Germany and the United States and that the technology will reach the market in the first quarter of 2019. He warned that governments need to invest heavily in infrastructure to receive new technologies, a since the provision or lack of mobile communication infrastructure has a direct correlation with the industry's competitiveness on the global stage. “Countries like China, the United States and Australia are preparing to receive new technologies. Operators are working to ensure that the first smartphone with 5G technology is on the market in the first quarter of 2019,” he said.
According to him, American operators are very well positioned and that is why it is possible for the United States to come out ahead again. However, he highlights China's planning, which will carry out a large-scale test in 2019, with a view to implementing the technology commercially in 2020.
Meeting with the rectory
The dean of Unicamp, professor Marcelo Knobel, received the Qualcomm delegation shortly after the inaugural class. Professor João Romano, director of FEEC, professor Luiz Carlos Kretly and the executive director of Inova Unicamp, professor Newton Frateschi, also participated in the meeting. Knobel highlighted Cristiano Amon as a success story. “Seeing people who left Unicamp and made it this far is always great,” he said.
During the visit, Marcelo Knobel made a presentation about Unicamp and the group discussed partnership possibilities. Regarding the company's interaction with universities, for Amon, the training of engineers at the main universities in Brazil is very strong, but there is still a lack of more formal interaction between universities and companies. He cites Qualcomm's relationship with the University of San Diego (UCSD), in California, as a positive interaction. Qualcomm maintains the Qualcomm Institute at UCSD, where the university and the company carry out cutting-edge research in partnership. But the collaboration is broader, the company is in frequent contact with UCSD to discuss the main long-term technological challenges, which provides curriculum guidance, as well as research of common interest.
For the executive director of Inova Unicamp, this type of interaction is beneficial and can be expanded to other sectors, such as entrepreneurship from the university, through companies incubated or created based on university research. Frateschi believes that recent changes in the legal framework for S,T&I can favor the understanding of the benefits of complementarity of functions in university-industry collaboration. “We are interested in establishing a dialogue with Qualcomm and other technology companies to understand and position ourselves in the face of the main long-term technological challenges”, commented Frateschi.
