The future talent development program operated by global semiconductor company **Qualcomm Incorporated** has begun activities in 2025 amid nationwide attention. About 170 middle and high school students from 20 teams across the country participated in this year’s program, once again confirming its position as a convergence talent training program.
Qualcomm has been operating the ‘Qualcomm Scholarship Program’ since 2015 as a long-term investment for a sustainable society. This program is conducted in conjunction with the **FIRST Tech Challenge**, the representative youth robot competition of the **FIRST Foundation** in the United States, with more than 700,000 participants from over 110 countries around the world. The core goal is to help Korean middle and high school students gain experience solving real-world problems by converging science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The FIRST Tech Challenge is a competition that presents a new topic every year and allows participating students to design and build robots that can solve the problem. During the robot production process, students develop not only technical thinking skills but also various capabilities such as setting team goals, writing research journals, and establishing collaboration and strategies. It is characterized by being designed to go beyond a simple technical competition and to naturally acquire convergent thinking by experiencing the entire problem-solving process.
The Qualcomm Scholarship Program has been operated by the **Creative Engineering Education Association**, the official Korean partner of the FIRST Foundation, since 2010. The 2025 Qualcomm Scholarship Team, which was launched with an online inauguration ceremony on December 12 last year, began building a robot that would perform this year’s mission, the relic interpretation task, based on the provided online training course.
In particular, this year, the participating regions expanded beyond Seoul and the metropolitan area to include Jeolla, Gyeongsang, Gangwon, and Jeju. To support this, face-to-face workshops were run in each region, contributing to increasing each team’s understanding of technology and completeness of mission execution. It is evaluated that the regional expansion method that improves access to education has raised the level of completeness of the program to the next level.
Becky Fraser, Vice President of Government Affairs at Qualcomm, said, “It is meaningful to be able to see at the Korea Robot Championship that the students on the Qualcomm scholarship team take on challenges with greater passion every year.” He added, “The growth of the teams that represented Korea in the First Championship is very impressive, and we will continue to strive to foster convergent talent through cooperation with FIRST and FEST.”
The response from the educational field is also positive. Principal Moon Gyeong-sam of Seogwipo Industrial High School, who participated in this program for the first time, evaluated that the students showed great growth through the process of working together and immersing themselves in robot production. He said he hopes the Qualcomm Scholarship Program will be an opportunity to develop creative convergence skills as well as teamwork and a spirit of challenge.
The Qualcomm scholarship team will participate in the **Korea Robot Championship** held at the **Daejeon Convention Center** for two days starting January 30th next year to share their achievements and challenge selection for the Korean national team. The selected team will participate in the **FIRST Championship** held at the end of April to compete and interact with teams from around the world.
Summary and expected effects
The Qualcomm Scholarship Program systematically strengthens the convergence capabilities of youth through problem-solving-oriented education using robot production. Expanding national participation and customized regional support show potential as a long-term talent development model.
conclusion
The Qualcomm Scholarship Program, which goes beyond technical education and encompasses cooperation, challenges, and global exchanges, has established itself as a realistic solution to nurturing convergence talents required by future society. Expansion of the talent ecosystem through continued public-private cooperation is attracting attention.
Introduction to the Creative Engineering Education Association
As the official Korean partner of the US FIRST Foundation since 2010, the Creative Engineering Education Association has been holding the ‘Korea Robot Championship’, a Korean competition of the ‘First Tech Challenge’, a robot festival and global robot competition where Korean youth develop teamwork and convergence problem-solving capabilities through robots and share and enjoy their achievements, for 15 years. In addition, we provide story-based and fun differentiated convergence education content through the Daejeon Science Festival and the Korea Education Expo to provide convergence experiences and education programs, and are conducting creative convergence talent development programs for several leading companies such as Qualcomm, Novelis, and KLA. (Photo provided)
