CSME and SCALE

A skilled technical microelectronics workforce is required to ensure success of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) modernization initiatives. As microelectronics is reshaping the semiconductor industry, devices used in national security and defense need additional innovations to remain secure and operate in extreme environments. Cutting-edge education and research are critical to meeting these national security requirements.

Purdue University was selected in December 2019 to lead a five-year, DoD-sponsored national initiative aimed at addressing the urgent need to develop a highly skilled U.S. microelectronics workforce to bolster national security. Comprising 17 partner universities across the country, the Scalable Asymmetric Lifecycle Engagement Microelectronics Workforce Development program (SCALE) is a $19.2 million public-private-academic partnership formed to advance the technical capabilities of the domestic microelectronics workforce, and to motivate talented STEM undergraduate and graduate students to pursue federal government careers in the semiconductor field.

SCALE is being managed in partnership with the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division as a nationally coordinated network of government, industry and university partners, regionally executed. Faculty from across Purdue’s College of Engineering are collaborating with experts from 16 other universities, the DoD, NASA, the Department of Energy NNSA labs, and the defense industry to create a microelectronics workforce focused on national security needs.

The workforce development program provides microelectronics modules; mentoring; public- and private-sector internship matching; and targeted research projects for college students interested in these microelectronics specialty areas:

• Radiation hardening
• Heterogeneous integration/advanced packaging
• System-on-a-chip electronics
• Embedded systems security/artificial intelligence (AI)
• Supply chain awareness

SCALE partners work with students across the nation to build strong relationships with government and the defense industrial base, as well as to develop new technologies needed for secure and resilient microelectronics.

Among its first-year accomplishments, SCALE:

• Supported the solicitation of research proposals for Purdue’s Center for Secure Microelectronics Ecosystem (CSME), for which SCALE will provide graduate traineeships. CSME is a first-of-its-kind global partnership of academia, industry and government to advance research and workforce development in designing secure microelectronics. Its aim is to help ensure a secure supply of semiconductor chips and related products and tools, from the foundry to the packaged system, based on a zero-trust model.
• Kicked off the embedded systems security/AI and supply chain awareness focus areas.
• Started the internship program in Summer 2021, and doubled the number of internships available to students for Summer 2022.
• Added four universities to the SCALE network and increased the scope of one original university partner.

Going forward, SCALE will aim to recruit and train a larger number of students through a combination of classes, projects, research and internships. It also will be important to further strengthen the partnership between SCALE’s member universities and its partners, to ensure that these experiences are as up-to-date, motivational and educational as possible.

SCALE Public-Private-Academic Network