$12 million gift from alumnus Arthur Chiao creates a new engineering excellence fund at university
More than 45 years after Arthur Y.C. Chiao finished his master’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of Washington, he has come back to the place that trained him.
Winbond Electronics Corporation America, the California-based semiconductor company whose parent Chiao leads as chairman and chief executive, is giving $12 million to the UW College of Engineering.
The gift creates the Winbond Endowed Fund for Excellence. It is one of the more significant corporate investments in American engineering education this year and one of the more personal.
The gift comes from Winbond’s U.S. arm, founded in 1998 and based on North First Street in San Jose, in the middle of Silicon Valley, with a second office in Pleasanton.
The company does semiconductor design, sales, and customer support for American technology firms, and it specializes in the memory and integrated-circuit solutions found in everything from industrial systems to consumer electronics.
Now that American presence is backing the next generation of American engineers.
What makes the fund unusual is its flexibility. Many major gifts are tied to one building, one professorship, or one program.
This one is designed to let the college move quickly.
It can be used to recruit and keep outstanding faculty, fund student scholarships and fellowships, strengthen research infrastructure, support early-stage research, and launch interdisciplinary work.
In the university’s words, it lets the college invest in “exceptional people, promising ideas, and emerging opportunities” as they come up, rather than waiting for the right restricted gift.
Chiao sees the fund as a catalyst for breakthrough discoveries. He hopes it will help the college pursue bold initiatives and respond to new opportunities in fields that will be strategically important in the future.
The university names semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and advanced manufacturing as examples. UW Engineering already leads in these areas, and the fund could later expand into other emerging disciplines.
These fields also sit at the center of the national conversation about American technological strength.
The timing matters. Over the past several years, the United States has made a concerted push to rebuild chip research, manufacturing, and talent at home, most visibly through the CHIPS and Science Act, which Congress passed in 2022 to encourage domestic fabrication, research, and workforce training.
Laws and factories alone cannot close the gap. The country also needs engineers, researchers, and faculty who can design and build the technologies that come next.
A gift aimed at exactly those people, at one of the country’s largest public engineering schools, adds private support to a national priority.
The scale of UW Engineering shows how far that support can reach. The college is among the university’s largest, with more than 10,000 students and about 350 faculty members.
It also produces more electrical and computer engineering graduates than almost any school in the country, ranking fifth nationally. Chiao studied in that same department more than four decades ago.
A flexible endowment at a school of this size can shape thousands of careers, many of which will end up in American companies, laboratories, and startups that drive the country’s innovation economy.
University leaders quickly pointed to the alumnus behind the gift. “Winbond’s investment in the College of Engineering reflects tremendous confidence in our faculty and students and strengthens our ability to advance discovery in emerging technologies,” said UW President Robert J. Jones.
“The fact that this partnership is championed by UW alumnus Arthur Chiao makes it all the more special to the university.”
Nancy Allbritton, the Frank and Julie Jungers Endowed Dean of the College of Engineering, described the gift as an expression of lasting loyalty.
“Arthur Chiao’s vision, leadership, and lifelong commitment to the University of Washington make this gift especially meaningful,” she said.
“This investment strengthens our ability to attract talent, foster innovation, and deepen collaborations, creating new opportunities for students and researchers while advancing the technologies that will shape the future.”
Chiao has been with Winbond since 1987. Over more than three decades, he has become known for advancing memory and logic chip innovation, building independent research and development capabilities, and bringing industry, academia, and government together.
That last point is clearly part of this gift.
The fund is meant to connect the Seattle campus more closely with industry partners and research collaborators. Chiao has said he sees Seattle as a gateway and the university as an important connector for future technology innovation.
The relationship has already been celebrated in person. Winbond President Pei-Ming Chen joined President Jones at a campus event in Seattle last month to mark the partnership before the gift was announced publicly.
In the end, the Winbond Endowed Fund for Excellence follows a familiar pattern in American higher education: a student comes to a public university, gets a rigorous technical education, builds a career at the top of a demanding industry, and decides, decades later, to give back.
Chiao’s gift is not tied to one project.
It is a vote of confidence in the people who will work on the next generation of chips, intelligent systems, and manufacturing breakthroughs, and it gives the University of Washington the freedom to back them early.