Portland State's Semiconductor Pipeline with Christof Teuscher and Andrea Goforth

On this episode of PDXPLORES, Professor Christof Teuscher from the Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science and Andrea Goforth, an assistant professor in chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, discuss Portland State’s expansive and accessible semiconductor pipeline. With the addition of the Semiconductors and More (SMORE) Center, PSU’s comprehensive semiconductor curriculum equips and connects students to careers within Portland’s burgeoning “Silicon Forest.” 

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Transcript

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Welcome to PDXPLORES, a Portland State research podcast featuring scholarship, innovations, and discoveries pushing the boundaries of knowledge, practice, and what is possible for the benefit of our communities and the world. I'm Andrea Goforth. I'm a professor of chemistry here at Portland State University. I'm also the director for the Center for Electron Microscopy and Nanofabrication, or CEMN. As a chemist, I'm a solid state chemist and I'm particularly interested in developing synthetic methods to tune the properties of solids such as silicon and other materials that are used in the chips industry. My name is Christof Tuescher. I'm a professor in electrical and computer engineering here at Portland State University. The research that my team is doing is mainly focusing on what we call beyond more, meaning the traditional more architecture. So that also means beyond silicon quite often. And so we're really interested to push the limits of computers and build new types of computers in different ways and program them differently. So the time frame that we're working in is more than 10 to 20 years time frame as opposed to industry time frame, which is more like five year-ish . So it's pushing into no man's land and trying to make computers better, faster, more capable. Semiconductors is a very diverse field where conceivably a lot of different majors would have skills of value to the semiconductor industry. So there's no one curriculum, I think, but a variety of majors here at Portland State that you can study that would prepare you naturally for careers in the semiconductor industry. And I want to give a plug for our new Semiconductors and More Center, or SMORE Center, S M O R E, which will connect those diverse majors and offer career internship opportunities, career advising services, for a variety of majors to help pair you with jobs in the industry. We have degrees in electrical and computer engineering. Most of our students actually end up in the semiconductor industry. Most of them end up in the local semiconductor industry. And that's a big plus that PSU has. A lot of our students actually like to stay local, and that's something our local employees really enjoy, because students don't leave. Besides all the different degrees that we offer at the bachelor's, master's, and PhD level in the different units at PSU, we also have really cutting edge labs and PIs who do research in a variety of fields related to semiconductors, going from materials up to architectures, design validation testing, design automation, and all kinds of things. So we really cover what we call the entire stack, entire computing stack, from the materials up to architectures and even applications. I think Intel is the biggest employer. They offer a lot of internships to our students. They offer a lot of jobs. Tektronix is another example. Applied Materials, Inc. And semiconductors and microelectronics touch nearly every sector of the economy. Smart transportation. Energy savings. Certainly health and life sciences. Oregon is also big into data centers for all kinds of big companies and those data centers are really power hungry and reducing the power footprint of those is a big challenge and that is directly related to the semiconductors that are in these data centers and so there's big efforts there. Again Ampere is a new company in Portland here that really targets these data centers with highly efficient devices. And that's just one example of where students can make a real impact on local businesses and on the environment as well. This area is certainly called Silicon Forest and has been for a long time. I'd say it's probably the number one or two in the nation, state, in terms of the number of employees in the semiconductor industry. Oregon's probably number two or three in the country. Outside of Intel, a large number of companies work in the semiconductor microelectronics sector. There's a big national effort to fund, especially workforce development for the semiconductor industry, because we all realize that there isn't enough people to really get the work done that the U. S. industry needs. And so Congress funded what's called the CHIPS Act. That's a huge amount of money that is directly going to semiconductor industry and related industries, including a lot of the educational programs. And so PSU is hopeful that we can benefit directly or indirectly through the CHIPS Act. Through grants, through industry, and really help to fill these pipelines with a capable workforce. We already have a lot of the existing pipelines. For us, for PSU, it's more about enlarging these pipelines and feeding them in the right place so that industry can really benefit from our institution, from our degrees, from our capable students. The vision behind the CHIPS Act is really to secure America's global leadership and capability in producing its own chips, which is critical for long term economic security. Problems that cropped up during the COVID pandemic with chip shortages, I think, laid bare the need to secure a domestic supply of chips. What will need to happen is for the trained workforce to grow in the meantime in order to be able to fill those jobs and fulfill that vision. And I think Portland State is in a very good position, given its history with placing students in the local semiconductor industry, to take an even bigger role in building the semiconductor microelectronics workforce of the future. Semiconductor would be the term for the material that computer chips are based on. Maybe that term makes it sound overly simplistic. The technology that goes into making a chip is really to pattern the thing on a very small and intricate scale. And it takes a lot of scientific technology, a lot of people with the right know how to be able to produce the more and more complex architectures that lead to better and faster computing. The way we've been building computers for the last seven, eight decades has been quite constant, right? We've basically used silicon. That's the semiconductor building materials that we use. And the computing architecture, the way we're structuring the materials to do certain things, hasn't changed much over the last many decades. But we're running out of steam, and that's why we're sometimes saying that we want to go beyond what's called Moore's Law because Moore's Law is the scaling that predicts or roughly predicts that every other year the performance will double and we're hitting physical limits. At some point you just can't make these transistors--the basic building blocks of a computer chip-- any smaller because we're getting to the atomic level where you just can't make things any smaller. So industry is really struggling with that to keep the progress going and that's why we're interested to look into new ways of building computers and that's certainly part of the CHIPS Act as well. Not just pursuing the traditional way but also exploring new ways of building computers, programming them differently. And neuromorphic computing is perhaps a term that comes up often these days. AI related special machines that Mimic in some way the brain and can do things that other computers traditionally are not so good at doing. It goes back decades, literally. Our program, I think, has been traditionally a feeder for the semiconductor industry. And I think it's based on a reputation that we have grown over the years, that students get internships, and many of our, especially international students, are really looking for that. That's a key for their success. They come here because they know they can get an internship at Intel or any of the other big companies. The word has spread over the years and I think we have a reputation that we can build on. Things have changed over the years for sure, I think in a good way mostly. We've certainly grown and we still place most of our students in the local semiconductor industry. There's momentum from alumni network that works in that area, out in Hillsborough and in the Portland metropolitan area. It sort of feeds itself. We're fortunate with geography that it's easy enough to take advantage of being able to get your education here at Portland State while conducting an internship in a real job setting. We're just very close and we have good alumni and faculty ties to the industries here. So we're able to put our students in good position, and that's something that we're looking to further increase the scale of over the next few years. Many of our classes are also taught by adjuncts who are working in industry. So that means those classes tend to be very applied. The adjuncts really can teach the things that you will need on the job in industry at Intel, and I think that's again a big plus of our programs. It's applied very hands on, and students get skills that they can use immediately. What can be improved, I think, is maybe more specially tailored degrees. You can get into the CHIPS area via a number of majors. Chemistry, Physics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Material Science, Environmental Science, Air Quality and Water Control are super important for producing CHIPS. There's a wide variety of skill sets, one can bring. Supply chain management, I mean, even politics and global politics that the semiconductor industry touches on. I think what we're really good at here at Portland State is connecting the students to employers. And I think that's something our SMORE Center, through our career and advising services will offer there, will help us to enhance even more. Help you find, with your major, a good experiential opportunity in your courses and in your opportunities for internships. Compared to other places, we don't have big facilities for fabricating actual semiconductors, and that's at some point a plus because those facilities are really, really expensive to maintain. We're in a niche where I think we really can play to our strength with what we have, and again, placing interns and students in the industry, that's part of our strength. I think something that could be improved is extending those pipelines further down into the K12 regime, where we grab high schoolers and really get them into the semiconductor pipeline a lot earlier because we rely to a large extent on the international students and that has worked, but we think we can strengthen the pipelines and enlarge them and also serve Oregon communities by feeding more students earlier into our pipelines So that's one thing we're trying to do also through the SMORE center-- really provide programs at the pre-college level so that students know what we're doing and students have opportunities and they will hopefully stay at PSU and not go somewhere else. I would highlight that I don't think I knew that a career in this industry existed when I started college. And I think that's probably pretty common. You know, you don't think there are jobs available. You may not know to go after them, so there will be jobs in this area in the United States for the foreseeable future. We have a program sponsored by an alumni who sponsors undergrad students, and that's a first this year. And I think there's certainly an effort going on to add more programs, more opportunities for interns, specifically with the goal to feed them into the semiconductor pipelines. It helps to make the pathway more apparent. That there is a career, and these are the steps that you would need to get into that career. I agree, it starts with K through 12 awareness of what sort of skill set you need. And connecting to community college and making sure they're beyond the two year degree, a four year degree that will get you further, and a master's degree beyond that, that can get you more career advancement. There's also efforts to connect better to community colleges, because that's an important pipeline. And I think we should highlight that PSU is really very affordable. That's an extremely affordable and useful degree, no matter where you end. And I think people don't always realize that, how good of a deal it actually is, compared to other institutions. The students in general report a high level of career satisfaction. Christof mentioned people like Portland, life is good in Portland staying here. And, you know, you get really competitive salaries out of these jobs. They're maybe hard jobs, but they're rewarding and they pay well. So I hear a lot of career satisfaction, kind of across the board from our alumni that are working in these industries. I think students really like us overall. We're also very approachable in the sense that faculty are available as opposed to other bigger institutions where you rarely see your faculty. And at PSU, we're available for students, I think, to a much larger, better extent. So that's something students really, I think, highlight usually. The support we can provide, the sort of more personal education that we can provide, the research opportunities in our labs. Including for high schoolers, right, my lab this summer is full of high schoolers and they're working in all kinds of areas of computer engineering, including semiconductors. And so it's providing these opportunities to local students that I think make a difference. It goes beyond the classroom. Well, yeah, it goes well beyond the classroom. There's other institutions where you can't just knock on a professor's door as a high schooler, but you can definitely do that at PSU. I think our SMORE Center will connect those dots better than they are currently connected. Individually, engineering has a good history of putting their alums in these careers. Physics and chemistry, we have plenty of alumni in these careers. We aim to make a more one stop shop. Not for our sake, but for the students sake, because it is really a diverse industry. If you're on the floor making chips these days, what they really want is a super engineer. Somebody who knows a little bit about physics, chemistry, computer programming, all the above. And so it's a really interdisciplinary area of study. It affects every sector of the economy you can think of. I don't think Christof or I, either one could say much about the school of business, the marketing and the global politics of semiconductors, but certainly a big area of hiring that's related to this sector. And it's not just the science of producing the chips, but supply chain security and being able to produce your own chips. So it's multifaceted. Also depends on the degree. I would say the bachelor's degree is fairly well defined. There isn't that much freedom to take classes in another department, but once you're at the PhD level, and like a student, for example, is working in the computer engineering area, that person may want to take a semiconductor materials course in physics, and that's entirely possible at that level. The dots are better connected the higher up you are in your degree programs. But really, we provide a variety of pipelines and opportunities for students at a variety of levels, and I think that's also something our students appreciate. There's a lot of funding sources also that we receive. National Science Foundation, DARPA, SRC, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, has funded several of our faculty over many years. And we had an undergrad research program funded by SRC, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, years ago. We're very successful also in that sense. It's attracting funding for semiconductor related research, besides all the educational aspects that we mentioned. And of course, these two feed into each other. Good educational programs really are based on the good research programs and vice versa. Picking up on the curriculum theme, we do have several good tailored programs. I want to say it's never too late to join the pipeline. You can re-skill at any time or add new feathers to your cap at any time. You might have a degree, an undergraduate degree in biology or a two year degree in biology. You know, take more courses in physics or engineering and get that bachelor's degree. Maybe you have a bachelor's degree in chemistry. We have a graduate certificate in Materials Science and Semiconductor Engineering that would get you just a little further along your path. We really do have tailored programs already along the career stages. To convert a two year to a four year degree, a four year to a get more graduate education. A certificate at the graduate level to a master's degree. Get your master's degree and keep studying for a PhD . Geography is helpful there, too. I mean, we're situated in the heart of the Silicon Forest. And, you know, as long as you desire to keep working on your career, personal, professional development, we have classes that will suit that and flexibly allow you to get more education that will further you in your career. Location is important, right? We're really close to the semiconductor industry. People know that Intel is in Portland and they've heard probably that you can get a job there. People like Portland. We do have that advantage as well. It makes convenient collaborations between the faculty here in the industry. It makes. convenient industry guests teaching here at Portland State. I think it makes possible more conveniently the networking that we all know is important in career development. It's hard to understate how much the connectivity of the environment around you helps you to get where you want to be. So like Christof said, I think our faculty, we have active collaborations with industry in this area. We're accessible, I think, compared to some larger programs with bigger graduate components of their education, but I think it's good connectivity that puts us in an excellent position to help our students succeed. I think at Portland State, we have an emphasis on inquiry driven classroom experiences. So that it's not just us lecturing theory to you, but conveying theory and helping you use it to solve a problem. I'm impressed with the way we do capstone projects here already. You get to apply your knowledge to some unknown problem that would have community impact. Where I'd like to see that grow is that you spend even more of your time in inquiry driven, hands on projects that really get you the experience and skill sets you need for your career. Theory is important, learning the basics is important, but I think the thing that differentiates students is feeling they have that hands on experience and that ability to apply critical thinking when they encounter new problems to solve them. So I think I would be really excited about increasing the number of classes and opportunities where you're really applying inquiry driven investigation. So in computer engineering, everybody takes digital systems and circuits. That's sort of a standard class that everybody needs to take. Microprocessors is also another class. Computer architecture. These are standard classes that really get you the foundations for semiconductors. More at the grad level we have VLSI design, that's very large scale integration systems design, solid state electronics, semiconductor electronics, and that sort of thing. Including design automation, validation, verification courses. So we really, again, cover the entire stack of things that you need to know as a semiconductor person at whatever level you're going to work at. And this also goes across departments and units, right? Physics definitely has covered the material science and the physics side much more than ECE does. We're covering more the architecture, design, etc. Computer science also offers some key courses. I think what's been very popular and new in our department is the courses about neural networks and neuromorphic engineering. That's really something students realize they need. If you're a good programmer and you know something about neural networks in these days, that's a guarantee for a job, basically. That wasn't the case 10 years ago. We actually killed the neural networks course back then, because nobody was interested. And that has completely changed. So that's a new good thing, and I think students should expect to see more of these rapid changes in that area. With entirely new types of computers, including quantum computers, and maybe superconducting computers and whatnot, there's a whole range of possibilities to, again, go beyond Moore's Law and beyond the traditional way of building computers. We're running a couple of undergrad research programs specifically with the goal to attract populations who may not have access to PSU itself or can't travel and things like that. And so those programs are all online. We run virtual research internships for those students to offer even greater accessibility. And that is certainly a feeder into these pipelines potentially. There's always the hope that those students who are in these programs that are not geared for PSU students, they're geared for students outside of PSU, but that those students will eventually join PSU and benefit from what we offer here. I think that's part of the challenge is like this is a very diverse industry. Engineering is different from quality control of like air and water. There's a number of different types of degrees that work in this sector, so we're hoping the Semiconductors and More Center will be a place where people connect to the theme of their careers in this sector of the economy and get career advising, internship advising, coursework advising. It's very interdisciplinary and not major and know all there is to know. This will be our central center for research, education, workforce development around semiconductors. PSU is the most diverse student body in the state of Oregon. Probably one of the most diverse student bodies in the United States. And it's going to take a diverse talent pool to help us climb out of the crises that we face in the future. Technology will need to do that. It's critical to bring new groups into the pipeline. To serve those that haven't had access, I think this will be critical in raising the workforce and the talent we need to achieve our national vision. My name is Christof Tuescher, and my goal is to build better, faster, and more capable computers to solve tomorrow's societal problems. My name is Andrea Goforth, and I make and measure nanomaterials for applications in biomedical engineering and electronics. Thank you for listening to PDXPLORES. If you liked what you heard on this episode, please rate and follow the show anywhere you get your podcasts.