The
CHIPS and Science Act, aimed at kick-starting chip manufacturing in the United States, only began taking requests for pieces of its US $50 billion in March, but chipmakers were already gearing up beforehand. Memory and storage chipmaker Micron announced as much as $100 billion for a new plant in upstate New York. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), which was already building a $12 billion fab in Arizona, upped the investment to $40 billion with a second plant. Samsung is planning a $17 billion fab near Austin, Texas, and in September Intel broke ground on the first of two massive new facilities worth $20 billion in central Ohio.

Exciting as this is for the U.S. economy, there’s a potential problem: Where will the industry find the qualified workforce needed to run these plants and design the chips they’ll make? The United States today manufactures just 12 percent of the world’s chips, down from 37 percent in 1990, according to a
September 2020 report by the Semiconductor Industry Association. Over those decades, experts say, semiconductor and hardware education has stagnated. But for the CHIPS Act to succeed, each fab will need hundreds of skilled engineers and technicians of all stripes, with training ranging from two-year associate degrees to Ph.D.s.

Engineering schools in the United States are now racing to produce that talent. Universities and community colleges are revamping their semiconductor-related curricula and forging strategic partnerships with one another and with industry to train the staff needed to run U.S. foundries. There were around 20,000 job openings in the semiconductor industry at the end of 2022, according to Peter Bermel, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Purdue University. “Even if there’s limited growth in this field, you’d need a minimum of 50,000 more hires in the next five years. We need to ramp up our efforts really quickly.”

Intel arrives at Ohio State

Ohio State University is using its chip-fabrication facility to train future engineers and technicians. Here, from left to right, are OSU students Caleb Mallory and Jayne Griffith, manager of nanofabrication Aimee Price, and Columbus State Community College student Chris Staudt, who’s also on staff at OSU’s Nanotech West Laboratory.Peter Adams

The U.S. Midwest might be known more for farming and heavy industry than semiconductors, but chipmakers are betting it is fertile ground for their industry, thanks to an abundance of research universities and technical colleges.

Take Intel, which wants to create a “Silicon Heartland” in Ohio. In addition to building two cutting-edge chip factories on a 4-square-kilometer megasite that could hold six more fabs, the company has pledged $50 million to 80 higher-education institutions in the state. The funds should help the universities and community colleges upgrade their curricula, train and hire faculty, and provide equipment, and Intel also plans to provide internships, guidance, and research opportunities.

Part of those funds have gone to
Ohio State University, which will lead a new interdisciplinary Center for Advanced Semiconductor Fabrication Research and Education that will span 10 in-state colleges and universities. While most of the semiconductor-related curriculum has been designed for students in electrical and computer engineering, OSU now wants to bring in students from other disciplines. The university is creating tracks for them to master semiconductor-related skills, and it’s revamping the curriculum in those disciplines to reflect the latest industry technology. Materials engineers will have new courses on chip packaging materials, industrial system engineers will learn semiconductor manufacturing processes, and mechanical engineers will get to know device fabrication tools, says Ayanna Howard, dean of OSU’s college of engineering. “Now that we’re bringing manufacturing back to [U.S.] shores, our curriculum is now bringing in all these components that have always been needed but haven’t been part of the plan at the scale required to train all these engineers.”

There is no shortage of talent in the region, Howard adds, since manufacturing is already a major activity in Ohio and other parts of the Midwest. In 2011, Ohio kicked off an initiative called
Jobs Ohio to create more science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduates in the areas of computer science, biotech, and health-care manufacturing. It’s now a matter of overhauling the curricula to cater to semiconductor manufacturing, she says. “When Intel came to the region, it really reinforced all the things that we had been thinking about.”

In addition to leading two projects with state colleges, OSU is collaborating with 10 other midwestern institutions, including
Purdue and the University of Michigan, to “think about engineering education more holistically,” says Howard. “How do we create a curriculum that allows universities that might not have the infrastructure—say, lab space or trained faculty—to give students semiconductor experience?”

In the fall of 2021, for example, OSU piloted a course to teach students about chip-fabrication processes using desktop laboratory equipment, allowing them to learn without an expensive clean room. The engineering school is also teaming up with the creative arts department to create augmented-reality and virtual-reality tools that will let students experience a simulated fab.

SkyWater moves next door to Purdue

About 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Intel’s development, another fab is planned. In July 2022,
SkyWater Technology, a foundry that makes chips using specialty and mature manufacturing processes, announced a $1.8 billion chip fab at an industrial park in West Lafayette, Ind. Next door, Purdue has launched a new interdisciplinary Semiconductor Degrees Program to give undergraduate and graduate students a range of options for gaining core skills