ISTEC is committed to design, install, and upgrade modular, flexible, and expandable laboratory facilities for education in R&D throughout the region. These facilities will be created in accordance with the number of existing laboratories in the region as well as per institution, institutional needs, number of students, and availability of equipment. Our main objectives are:

• Provide a common platform for education and R&D
• Facilitate acquisition of the latest tools (hardware, software)
• Serve as a vehicle of interaction between academia and industry

The need to reinforce ISTEC present infrastructure comes in a time in which our membership is growing. The exponential growth experienced has meant more expectations from our institutional and industrial members. This year alone, ISTEC will accept 30 new institutions into the Consortium. In addition, there exists a commitment to create Motorola laboratories in 27 universities that belong to the Consortium but do not have an existing lab. Industrial membership has increased from 2 to 11, and ISTEC is expecting to have new members such as Sun Microsystems and Microsoft.

Last year, Motorola, through ISTEC, committed to donate the M*CORE technology. In order to donate this equipment, ISTEC has been creating a working plan with both Synopsys and Mentor Graphics to prepare ISTEC members to utilize the M*CORE technology when it becomes available. It is clear that providing new software and hardware tools requires special training. The following training centers are being created to increase our capacity to serve both industrial and academic ISTEC membership:

On-site training facility at the University of South Florida, which has been a Cadence house for the last twelve years led by Professor Wilfrido Moreno

• Rapid System Prototyping
• Field Programmable Gate Array (FFGA)
• Electronic Design Automation (EDA)
• Component Added Design (CAD)
  
  Hot-Lab Support: A network of experts throughout Latin America led by Professor Guillermo Jaquenod
• Curricular Discussion
• Courses Development
• Database Development
• WWW distance education
• On-Line Support
• Expansion of R&D Facilities
• Technical Conferences
• Educational Boards design
• System Integration/Support
• On-site training

ISTEC training strategy is twofold

• Create a training Center at the University of South Florida at the Center for Microelectronics Research (CMR) to offer the opportunity to professors and students from the region to acquire hands on expertise on the industrial partner's developing tools, including the Motorola technologies. In addition, the participants will have the opportunity to collaborate in on-going industrial projects at CMR and in the development of course material. These professors and students will lead the instructional and Research efforts at their local institutions. A similar effort will be instituted at the UNM Center of High Technology Materials (CHTM).
  
  
• Coordinate a series of Information Technologies forums per region (i.e. Mercosur, Andean countries, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean). ISTEC will require existing educational materials, funding and personnel to support the workshops. The Hot-Lab Support group will coordinate smaller workshops per country to continue creating the critical mass needed for development of the R&D Initiative.