New York University is developing two new research facilities in Brooklyn, New York that are available to any potential partner in a regional semiconductor hub. One is a cutting-edge nanofabrication facility and another is a state-of-the-art THz measurement facility. These will fuel advanced research in quantum and THz electronics in the United States. These new facilities can also serve as training grounds for future semiconductor workers. This would be a perfect complement to the global-leading efforts for workforce development at Penn State, including the extensive work described in this issue of Focus on Materials being done by Osama Awadelkarim as director of the Center for Nanotechnology Education and Utilization.
“These two cutting-edge research facilities at NYU support several Research Centers within NYU in the fields of Quantum and Communications,” Davood Shahrjerdi, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering with NYU and director of the NYU Nanofabrication Facility, said. “A hallmark of these research centers is their strong connections with the semiconductor industry. Lastly, these research centers at NYU have well-established workforce development pipelines for educating the next generation of diverse engineers and researchers in the field of semiconductor manufacturing.”
Shahrjerdi envisions that a regional hub featuring Penn State and other universities would create a synergy of capabilities around semiconductors, while a partnership with industry would help set the agenda.
The inter-university partnership is crucial for amplifying the unique strengths of different universities in accomplishing this mission, facilitating a closer collaboration and development of unified strategies toward the lab-to-fab translation of cutting-edge research on unconventional semiconductors,” Shahrjerdi said. “At the same
time, the industrial partnership is crucial for understanding the needs of the semiconductor industry.”
The future semiconductor hub in the mid-Atlantic would come at a crucial time, Shahrjerdi believes, not just because of the need to the United States to revitalize its chip industry, but also at a time when new technology is needed to move the field forward.
“The semiconductor industry is at a critical juncture as the conventional silicon transistor scaling is running out of steam,” he said. “The ideal hub will focus on radical scientific and technological innovations that can result in groundbreaking technologies with an emphasis on their translations into manufacturing settings. It will also have a strong workforce development component for training the next generation of engineers and researchers necessary for this next step.”