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44 SMT Magazine • July 2017 Revier: I was interested in listening to the new EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, but I was certainly im- pressed at beginning of the meeting with Kim Ford. I didn't expect much, but the way she went around to meet everybody at the begin- ning of her presentation, was cool. Goldman: She shook everybody's hand and in- troduced herself to everyone present. Such en- thusiasm, too. Revier: She said really positive things about try- ing to understand our skill needs. What do we need from an educational standpoint? How do we get people where they need to be? It was very refreshing. She seemed very genuine about what she was talking about. Goldman: Yes, her focus was: "Tell us what you need; let us help you." The website she talk- ed about, the Perkins Collaborative Resource Network (PCRN), is easily found on Google. It popped right up for me (cte.ed.gov). There is a lot of useful information on it. Revier: Yes, it seemed very interesting. You know, by and large our industry is all about technolo- gy. If you look at our company, we're a more in- ternational corporation, and I've been with UIC now for 29 years. The reason I came here in the very beginning was about technology. Our par- ent company is in Japan. We still have, even to this day, 70 people involved in research and de- velopment. We just invested about $70 million in a brand new central research facility in Hi- rakata, Japan. We are totally committed to tech- nology for the future. I mean, it's all about what we do. Goldman: It's in your blood, so to speak. Revier: And it's what sets us apart too. We're all about technology. Where's it going? What are the customer needs? How do we advance the industry? At the same time, back in 1997, we made the commitment to set up our own tech- nical development center in Southern Connect- icut. That's our UIC tech center, where we can support customers with failure analysis and or- dinary samples. We do pilot plating there as well and some development work. We are ex- cited that we just recently received our first UIC developed patent. Also, we do some very precise, small-scale production there. Then we have blending facilities in other areas of North America. Goldman: What made you choose Connecticut? Revier: In 1992, we took over the precious met- al plating product line from a company called Degussa. At that time, we had not been in that area of the plating industry. We had not been in precious metals, but we had a long relation- ship on several different avenues with Degussa, which is now called Umicore. We took on that challenge in '92, and we picked up a number of great people and a facility in Connecticut. Later, we decided that we really needed to do more than that. We decided to build our own facility in Southington. We built it from the ground up; it's a 45,000 square-foot facili- ty where we can do everything we really need IMPACT Interviews Robert Irie, Office of Undersecretary of Defense, with John Mitchell.