Women leaders at six top research universities urge more diversity in semiconductor workforce

A push to rejuvenate the U.S. semiconductor industry won’t succeed without including more women and minorities in the workforce. That’s the rationale for a new academic consortium aimed at increasing diversity in microelectronics being launched by the women presidents and engineering deans at six prominent universities. “This is personal for us,” say the founders of the Education group for Diversification and Growth in Engineering ( EDGE) Consortium , which is holding a summit next week in Washington, D.C., to lay out a national strategy. “We have often been the ‘first’ women to occupy leadership roles, and frequently are still one of the few or only women in gatherings of industry leaders.” Last year, the federal government committed more than $50 billion to help rebuild domestic capacity in semiconductor manufacturing as part of the CHIPS and Science Act . But companies will also need a highly skilled workforce to operate those multibillion-dollar fabrication facilities as well as an army of scientists and engineers to develop the next generation of semiconductor chips. U.S. officials have estimated that filling such positions will require doubling or tripling the number of college graduates with degrees in physics, materials science, computer science, or electrical engineering. The EDGE Consortium seeks to ensure that academic programs to expand the current workforce, which is overwhelmingly male, white, and Asian, don...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news