SHyNE Sponsors PhD Student, Nate Coirier, to attend TechConnect

SHyNE Resource was excited to partner with the NNCI in supporting student Nathaniel Coirier to attend this year’s TechConnect World Innovation Conference & Expo as part of the 2024 Student Leaders Conference and TechConnect CHIPS Workforce Development Program.

Nate is an Electrical Engineering PhD Student at Northwestern, with the  Hooman Mohseni Lab. We asked Nate to share his thoughts on the conference and what he found to be the highlights!

"The primary takeaway I gleaned from the conference was the immense level of dedication to semiconductor workforce development displayed by all parties involved. Support for this development is occurring at many levels within the industry- as evidenced by the high diversity of companies and organizations that spoke at the conference. This is ranging from semiconductor supply-chain companies like Indium Corporation, to startup/ boutique facilities like Wolfspeed, to very well-established names in the industry, such as Micron, GlobalFoundries, Intel, and IBM.

The strategies discussed for recruitment and education were far more comprehensive and aggressive than I would've anticipated- for example, some companies are currently working with community colleges and technical schools to develop dedicated semiconductor technician coursework, and others are working on virtual-reality outreach and training programs to permit exposure of a much wider portion of the population to cleanroom work without necessitating close proximity/ visits to a cleanroom. Something that particularly impressed me is that the representatives from a number of the companies present mentioned that they are willing to offer relocation packages for positions at all levels within their company- not just for the folks in management and R&D. They noted that if they are going to be growing to as large of a size as they/ the U.S. government desires in order to have supply chain security, this will eventually represent a very significant portion of their recruitment efforts.

There were some interesting technical talks as well- and in particular, I enjoyed hearing about the use of particle accelerators operating as free electron lasers for photolithography, as an attempt to dethrone/ offer an alternative to the sources created by ASML. Although it initially sounds like a crazy idea, the fact that there is ongoing R&D on such systems excites me as it displays the level of the scientific and engineering advancements that will be enabled by the CHIPs act, and eventually by a more mature U.S. semiconductor fabrication industry." – Nate