NSF awards RIT $3M to advance semiconductor research and graduate trainings

Andrea Deckert//August 20, 2024//

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Rochester Institute of Technology will provide 20 doctoral student fellowships to advance research in the field of semiconductor technologies with $3 million in funding from the National Science Foundation.

The award is part of the NSF’s Research Traineeship Program, a national initiative to better prepare master’s and doctoral students for the interdisciplinary skills required in semiconductor chip development. It also is a means to align training with evolving workforce demands and address a domestic semiconductor workforce shortage.

Training opportunities will focus on next-generation technologies to address skill gaps in advanced materials and devices, characterizations, packaging, modeling and simulation, and semiconductor manufacturing processes and fabrications, said Jing Zhang, the principal investigator and project lead.

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“Our program will be one of the first to offer a transformative and dedicated graduate education training model with strong technical, professional and DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – components,” said Zhang, who is the Kate Gleason associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering.

She expects RIT to prepare more than 170 next-generation semiconductor engineers and scientists to help close the workforce gap and to strengthen the nation’s semiconductor technology leadership.

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