Three of Sondrel’s newest employees have successfully graduated from a programme aimed at addressing the worldwide shortage of qualified IC designers. Having obtained Master’s degrees from Southampton and York Universities, Lesong Qiu, Dan Li and Xianyu Zhou were recruited in the UK by Sondrel to fill new vacancies created by rapid growth in demand for its specialist services from manufacturers around the world. 
All three were then sent to the University of Nottingham’s Ningbo campus in China to undertake a course that Sondrel set up in partnership with Mentor Graphics. The three UK graduates were part of the second intake of twenty-three students who have just successfully completed three months’ of intensive training covering state-of-the-art IC design methodologies and practices.
Sondrel CEO, Graham Curren, explained:” We firmly believe in developing our new graduate talent and specifically wanted to find and train more young people for an international career in our offices around the world. Our working environment is multi-cultural and excellent communication skills coupled with cross-cultural awareness are vital for conducting business in global markets including China. We’ve been highly successful in the region and have many local and internationally-hired employees in our offices in Shanghai and Xi’an, but also wanted to hire recent graduates from British universities. Lesong Qiu, Dan Li and Xiangyu Zhou were not only outstanding in terms of their technical ability, which we knew we could further develop through the course at UNNC, but they also speak English well, having lived in the UK. These three young IC designers are set for an exciting career working in partnership with our customers in Europe, the US and China.”
