Hsinchu, Taiwan, January 7, 2002 - UMC (NYSE: UMC), a world leading semiconductor foundry, announced today that Dr. Karl L. Wang has joined the company as vice president of Design Technology. Dr. Wang, a semiconductor technology expert, will be responsible for supporting UMC customers that require third-party IC design technology ranging from silicon IP, to design libraries and physical design kits. He will also provide marketing and product engineering support for UMC's cutting-edge MPU and embedded MPU technologies. Dr. Wang will report directly to Fu Tai Liou, senior vice president of worldwide marketing and sales at UMC.

Dr. Liou commented, "UMC is constantly making efforts to enhance our engineering talent pool. We are happy to welcome Dr. Wang aboard UMC's technology team, as his rich knowledge and experience in the semiconductor industry will be a strong asset to our company. We are confident that he will bring tremendous added value to our customers by further elevating the scope and quality of our foundry services."

Karl received his B.S. at Rice University and later earned his M.S. and Ph.D degrees in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has an extensive technical background in semiconductor design and process technology, and possesses over 20 years of IC development experience in companies including Silicon Access Networks, Hitachi, Motorola and Texas Instruments. His project management experience covers a diverse range of products and technologies, including network and server processors, embedded microprocessor cores, digital signal processors (DSP), and static random access memories (SRAM).