New UMaine Course Jump-Starts Microelectronics Careers
Contact: Contacts: David Kotecki (UMaine), 581-2248; Penny Collins (NSC), 541-6141; George Manlove, 581-3756
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ORONO – Microchips — the microscopic circuitry that makes iPods, cell phones, computers and cameras work or that can be used for parcel tracking purposes and inventory control — are hard to see much less design and build.
Because of the complex demands of the job, microelectronics is a challenging, high-pressure field with a shortage of trained electrical engineers in the United States.
A new UMaine College of Engineering undergraduate course in integrated circuit (IC) design, developed cooperatively with National Semiconductor Corporation of Santa Clara, California and South Portland, Maine, will help bridge that gap. “ECE 498, Integrated Circuit Design” gives electrical and computer engineering students unusually early experiences in a field starved for trained personnel while at the same time stocking the labor pool for companies that need them.
“It’s a very unique program,” says Bijoy Chatterjee, director of Virtual Laboratories at National Semiconductor Corporation in California. “There may be another 10 schools in the world that can do this kind of work at the undergraduate level.”
Typically, electrical engineering students are offered the course as graduate students; what is unusual at UMaine is offering such sophisticated training and industry experience to undergraduates.
The new course in integrated circuitry (IC) trains a dozen or more engineering students as juniors and seniors each year in analog design and testing. National will fabricate their designs for them at their South Portland fabrication facility and then return the assembled units to the students for testing. Students in the class also are eligible for paid co-op internships with semiconductor product developers like National Semiconductor and a possibly a job there after graduation.
Participation not only gives UMaine’s electrical engineering graduates a leg up on their peers from other institutions; it also helps keep microelectronics jobs in the U.S., Chatterjee says.
“If a student wants to go to work in the industry, it’s hard to find somebody with an undergraduate degree who clearly understands what a chip is,” Chatterjee says. “It’s a plus for us to have students with this kind of training and good for students who have these marketable skills.”
The new IC course began this spring.
“If you talk with some of the students, I think you’ll find they are fairly positive and they got more out of their theoretical experience by having the practical design experience at the same time,” says David Kotecki, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and one of the architects of the program.
The program helps National Semiconductor because it has access through internships to some of Maine’s top engineering students, says Steve Swan, operations engineering manager at National Semiconductor in South Portland. He particularly likes Maine students to be a part of that labor pool, since they know what it’s like to live and work in Maine.
“Our interest, really, is developing talent locally. We can take a University of Maine graduate and now they can be about two years ahead of their peers,” he says.
The work experience gives students exposure to varied career opportunities within the field before they make final career decisions, says UMaine junior Lucas DeLong from Ludlow, Maine, currently an intern at National Semiconductor.
“The co-op has let me get an up close view of thin films process engineering,” DeLong says. “I’ve also been able to learn a bit about other departments so I have the ability to decide that maybe thin films isn’t for me and maybe I’d like to give integration or design a try, or maybe work my way up to development. It’s a great way to see what you do or don’t want to do.”
The collaboration also addresses a national issue.
“A lot of chip design is moving slowly outside of this county,” says Chatterjee. Engineering students from overseas are filling the limited number of graduate school slots in the U.S., he says. “If our children are going to have those seats, they need to have better skills,” he says.
The course and work experience for undergraduates produces better trained, more committed and more marketable engineers sooner, Chatterjee says.
“I know this experience will help me compete,” DeLong says. “It’s experience in the industry, and that’s key to landing any job. It also gives me access to people I can use as contacts or references that I wouldn’t have otherwise.”
National Semiconductor is a member of the UMaine Microelectronics Consortium, along with Tundra Semiconductor, Fairchild Semiconductor, Analog Devices and Texas Instruments, which provides $1,500 scholarships for first-year students and $7,500 scholarships for upper-level students studying science and engineering and who have an interest in pursuing careers in the microelectronics industry.