Cliff Hou

Dr. Cliff Hou is Senior Vice President of Technology Development and Corporate Research under Research and Development (R&D) at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC). Prior to this post, Dr. Hou was TSMC's Vice President of Design and Technology Platform from August 2011 to July 2018 and later he served as Vice President of Technology Development in August 2018. He began his career at TSMC in 1997 and has since played a key role in the Company's design technology and ecosystem development.

From 1997 to 2007, Dr. Hou established the company's technology design kit and reference flow development organizations. Over the last decade, Dr. Hou supported the development of TSMC's Open Innovation Platform® (OIP), which is now the most comprehensive design ecosystem in the global semiconductor industry.

Dr. Hou received that National Manager Excellence Award in 2010 as a pioneer in reference flows and design for manufacturing (DFM) that significantly lowers IC design barriers. He led the Company's OIP project team to win the first National Industry Innovation Award in 2011, presented by the Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

Prior to joining TSMC, Dr. Hou was a section manager specializing in design environment at the Computer & Communications Research Laboratories, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI/CCL) in Taiwan. He also served as an Associate Professor at Kaohsiung Polytechnic Institute (now known as I-Shou University) in Taiwan.

Dr. Hou holds 44 U.S. Patents and serves as a member of Board of Directors in Global Unichip Corp. He received B.S. degree in Control Engineering from Taiwan's National Chiao-Tung University, and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Syracuse University.