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The West Coast Institute for NanoSystems Innovation focuses on designing, testing and validating silicon chips crucial to technologies including zero-power sensing, 5G/6G, AI, quantum information science and nanomedicine
OAKLAND, Calif. — Inside a newly renovated building nestled between the art studios on Northeastern University’s Oakland campus are machines capable of handling miniature electronic components so powerful that they are measured in nanometers — one billionth of a meter — but which can repair human tissue with a harmless spark.
The Institute for NanoSystems Innovation, which launched on the Boston campus in April, hosted a reception Monday to kick off a workshop on microsystems technologies. As Northeastern’s new West Coast advanced technologies lab, NanoSI brought electrical and computer engineering faculty together with industry experts and graduate students visiting from the Boston campus.
“There’s no greater place to do this than Oakland,” said David Horsley, professor of electrical and computer engineering and NanoSI deputy director. With its location near Silicon Valley, the new institute is poised to do work that is “transformative for the community,” he said.
The bicoastal institute will focus on designing, testing and validating the tiny silicon chips crucial to advanced technologies including zero-power sensing, 5G/6G communications, AI, quantum information science and nanomedicine. The new Oakland facility includes a lab, offices for six faculty members and workspaces for 26 graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. Outside is a forest of tall eucalyptus trees.
“I think this campus is suited to creative thinking,” said first-year Northeastern electrical engineering graduate student Kapil Saha. “It’s calm to be in nature.”
The institute creates collaboration opportunities for researchers and students on different Northeastern campuses, which is one reason why Saha and other students from the Boston campus made the trip to Oakland. They wanted to see for themselves what type of work will be possible.
“It will be an institute unlike any other,” said Ph.D. candidate Ryan Tetro. “It’s bicoastal, but it’s one group doing the same research.”
Part of the institute’s mission, Tetro said, is to help the United States become “chip independent” at a time when demand for chips is growing exponentially and the federal government is investing in the domestic semiconductor industry.
President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan CHIPS Act — Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors — in 2022, allocating $50 billion to U.S. startups and industry. Northeastern University received one of the first grants from the CHIPS Act’s Wireless Innovation Fund to test approaches to building open and interoperable next-generation wireless networks.
Semiconductors were developed in the 1950s and Silicon Valley venture capital organized to fund startups as early as the 1960s, but software development is faster and provides a quicker return on investment. Venture capital shifted to software in the 2000s, and the bulk of semiconductor research, design and manufacturing moved to Asia.
The result? A shortage of semiconductor talent just when the political mandate is to make more chips here in the U.S. At the same time, nearly every sector of business and industry needs smaller and more powerful semiconductor chips, from wireless communications to car manufacturers to consumer electronics.
Some industry leaders say that chip manufacturing is simply too slow. This year, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, announced that he is seeking upwards of $7 trillion in funding to increase chip-building capacity.
NanoSI launched with a mission to address this growing demand by partnering with industry and government to pilot manufacturing and drive innovative design. Horsley and NanoSI director Matteo Rinaldi received the 2024 Northeastern University Global Network Accelerator Award for their work advancing experiential learning.
“We need startup innovation across the board,” said Dan Armbrust, co-founder and director of Silicon Catalyst, which incubates semiconductor startups. Semiconductor design and manufacturing is expensive and difficult, he said, but federal investments, along with reinvigorated venture capital, are the only way forward.
Artificial intelligence places high demand on semiconductors because AI applications process and store massive amounts of data. “We have got to engineer our way through the next two decades,” Armbrust told the audience at Monday’s reception. “That smells like a startup opportunity.”
Armbrust asked audience members how many of them already run or would like to launch a startup. About a third of the people in the room raised their hands. Semiconductor startups take longer to achieve liquidity, he said. New startups need more than financial support to get off the ground. They need mentors who can advise them along the way. Silicon Catalyst offers mentoring and support to startups in the early stages.
In order to develop the semiconductor workforce, the timing for NanoSI couldn’t be better, said Jorge Villalobos, senior director of manufacturing at Onto Innovation, a semiconductor manufacturer based in Wilmington, Massachusetts. He said many engineering students don’t typically consider careers in semiconductor design because for many years the jobs were in software design.
But after decades of focus on coding, there’s a growing need for engineers trained to make semiconductors.
“I’m always looking to hire people and I’m hoping that this institute will open people’s eyes to the industry,” Villalobos said. “This is exposing a younger generation to semiconductors.”