All About STEM Radio Interviews Dr. Eden Zielinski.
News
Congratulations to Andres Aguirre on winning the Best Presentation award at the 2025 International Conference on Microelectronic Test Structures. Andres presented his paper “D-Mode GaN/AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMT Test Structures for Evaluating Gate Dielectric Impact on Device Performance”.
Andres is a 4th year graduate student in the UTD Materials Sciences and Engineering Department. His research is focused on the evaluation of gate oxide materials for GaN MOS-HEMTs for space applications. He is a member of the North Texas Semiconductor Institute at UTD, working closely with both the CHESS and C-SPEC divisions of the institute.
Congratulations to our Director for being recognized as a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow for his groundbreaking work on ferroelectric random-access memory.
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced that CHIPS for America awarded the Semiconductor Research Corporation Manufacturing Consortium Corporation (SRC) $285 million to establish and operate a CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute. With a combined total investment of over $1 billion, the new institute, known as SMART USA (Semiconductor Manufacturing and Advanced Research with Twins USA) will focus on efforts to more rapidly develop, validate, and use digital twins to improve domestic semiconductor design, manufacturing, advanced packaging, assembly, and test processes.
Read more about the award here.
The U.S. Department of Commerce awarded Texas Instruments (TI) up to $1.61 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS Incentives Program’s Funding Opportunity for Commercial Fabrication Facilities. This funding will support TI’s investment of more than $18 billion through the end of the decade to construct three new state-of-the-art facilities, including two in Texas and one in Utah.
Read more about the award here.
The U.S. Department of Commerce issued direct funding awards to GlobalWafers of up to $406 million under the CHIPS Incentives Program’s Funding Opportunity for Commercial Fabrication Facilities. These CHIPS investments will support projects with total capital expenditures of approximately $4 billion across Texas and Missouri.
Read more about the award here.
The U.S. Department of Commerce signed a preliminary memoranda of terms (PMT) under the CHIPS and Science Act to provide up to $33 million in proposed direct funding to Coherent. The proposed investment of would support the modernization and expansion of a state-of-the-art manufacturing cleanroom in Coherent’s existing facility in Sherman.
Read more about the award here.
To make computer chips — and the devices they power — even smaller and more efficient, engineers need new materials.
Three University of Texas at Dallas faculty members and collaborators from other universities and two industry partners have teamed up to design and test indium-based materials to enable the manufacture of the next generation of computer chips.
The researchers have received a $1.9 million, three-year grant to support their work through the National Science Foundation Future of Semiconductors (FuSe2) program.
Read the rest of the article here.
North Texas Semiconductor Institute Assistant Director Dr. Eden Zielinski was a panelist at the Economic Development Summit hosted by The University of Texas at Dallas. Along with Bill Sproull, managing partner of Sproull and Associates, Roby Hefton, City Manager of Sherman, and Brent Omdahl, Senior Vice President of Government Relations at GlobalWafers, the panel discussed the explosive growth of the semiconductor industry in North Texas and workforce development activities.
Read more about the Summit here.
North Texas Semiconductor Institute (NTxSI) Director Dr. Ted Moise presented on the semiconductor industry to the DFW Association for Business Economics. Ted shared the history of the semiconductor industry and the movement of manufacturing offshore, the U.S. work to reshore the industry through the CHIPS Act, the enormous investment in semiconductors happening in Texas today, and NTxSI’s workforce development efforts to ensure there is an adequate pipeline to support the industry.