ROCHESTER, N.Y. — As chips gain an even greater presence in the essential technologies of today, this gives rise to the transformative technologies of tomorrow.

“There's always been, you know, the need to hire engineers in this field to keep supporting the advancement in new technologies and to make things better, higher performance, lower cost to keep up with the technology,” electrical and microelectronic engineering professor Karl Hirschman said.

With an ongoing demand, countries around the world have been ramping up investments to lure semiconductor production and innovation to their shores. 

“There's been this heightened awareness of the lack of certain types of chips being made in the U.S. as we found out during the chip shortage that really initiated this entire CHIPS Act, this large investment,” Hirschman said.

Companies such as Micron and TEL are leading their first partnership program "UPWARDS" at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

“One of the key interests that they have is to have a partnership arrangement between the U.S. universities and the Japanese universities,” Hirschman said. “They have an interest in taking advantage of opportunities in both of these places.”

Bringing students to an international stage, RIT is one of six universities named as part of an international partnership to improve competitiveness in computer chip design, development, and manufacturing. 

“These programs are going to have a huge impact on providing this additional support that the industry needs to make sure that it is able to satisfy the workforce demands that the facilities are going to have,” Hirschman said.

It's aimed at expanding engineering education and research to underrepresented students like Yong Hwi Song, who is traveling to America for the first time.

“I haven't actually been outside of the Pacific region, Asia region, but now that I'm here, I'm actually very welcomed and I was really grateful that I took the chance to come here,” Song said.

The program is teaching and training future and current engineers for jobs in the semiconductor industry. 

“I was originally a student in the computer formation about AI, but I really wanted to actually make things that I could actually see and touch,” Song said. “Something I could be proud of and say, 'I built that.'”

It's building bridges with its academic colleagues in Japan and in the United States for possible future collaborative efforts.

“Even though there’s a language barrier, some challenges there, we all speak the same technology,” Hirschman said. “So they are able to pick things up very fast and it’s exciting.”

In 2022, the United States government stepped up to meet this challenge, enacting the landmark CHIPS and Science Act to provide needed semiconductor research investments and manufacturing incentives. Since the CHIPS Act was introduced, companies from around the world have responded enthusiastically, creating thousands of jobs in the semiconductor industry and supporting thousands of additional jobs throughout the U.S. economy.