Visiting CMU STeP at the Regional Science Park
On June 15th, Ice, Auu, and Alex paid a visit to CMU STeP — the Science and Technology Park at Chiang Mai University — at the Regional Science Park (RSP).
Meeting the Professors
We sat down with Asst. Prof. Dr. Suriya Thongmunee, Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Park, and Asst. Prof. Dr. Choncharoen Sawangrat of the Department of Industrial Engineering for a conversation about how buildfor.life and the university might work together. There’s a natural fit: STeP exists to connect Chiang Mai’s research community with companies building real products, and we’re an R&D company doing open-source hardware development a few kilometers down the road.
We walked them through what we do — long-lifetime, repairable electronics, our 48VDC ecosystem, the LED lamp program, and our power electronics research — and talked about where university collaboration could strengthen the engineering behind it.
A Potential New Home
Beyond the research collaboration, we discussed the possibility of moving our office to the Science Park itself. Being on-site would put us closer to the university’s labs, testing facilities, and — just as importantly — its engineering students and researchers.
For a small team like ours, that kind of environment matters. Chiang Mai has a deep pool of engineering talent, and the Science Park is where a lot of it concentrates.
What’s Next
Nothing is signed yet — this was a first conversation, and there’s plenty of detail still to work through. But the meeting left us optimistic, both about the collaboration itself and about what it would mean for buildfor.life to be part of the Science Park community.
We’ll share more as things take shape.
Header photo: CMU STeP by อุทยานวิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี มหาวิทยาลัยเชียงใหม่ (CMU STeP), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, unmodified.
