Tijuana natives stand out abroad fairly regularly and, on this occasion, Octavio Martínez stood out in the United States and Mexico due to his high-profile participation at the binational semiconductor chip agreement between both countries.

Martínez was an electric engineering student and has stated that he is very happy of having been chosen as an honorary witness to sign the memorandum of understanding (MOU) regarding semiconductor cooperation between the United States and Mexico.

According to what’s been revealed, the Mexican government asked Octavio Martínez, who currently works as Vice President of Product Integrity Engineering at Microsoft, to participate in this event.

Martinez’s education is what one would consider common in the border, as he has had a binational formation. His parents worked in Tijuana while he and his siblings studied at San Diego State University (SDSU).

He studied in the 1980s, where he participated in the SDSU MESA Program, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), and in this San Diegan institute he learned about semiconductor chips.

After SDSU, he continued working hard and started to work at Qualcomm, which was then a new telecommunication company headquartered in San Diego. It should be noted that cell phones back then were not that common, but he decided to bet everything on them.

Martínez hopes that through this MOU initiative, Mexico collaborates with the United States to educate the appropriate engineers to support this industry.