Advancing Northeastern’s Bicoastal Mission To Develop Next-Generation Silicon Chips
The Institute for NanoSystems Innovation, led by ECE Professors Matteo Rinaldi and David Horsley as director and deputy director, respectively, is growing its bicoastal initiative to pioneer advanced semiconductor design by collaborating with faculty, industry, and graduate students from the Boston and Oakland campuses.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Kate Rix. Main photo: The new Oakland facility includes a lab, offices for six faculty members, and workspaces for 26 graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. Photo by Greer Rivera for Northeastern University
New Northeastern research hub connects Oakland and Boston to advanced semiconductor research
OAKLAND, Calif.—Inside a newly renovated building nestled between the art studios on Northeastern University’s Oakland campus are machines capable of handling miniature electronic components so powerful that they are measured in nanometers—one billionth of a meter—but which can repair human tissue with a harmless spark.
The Institute for NanoSystems Innovation, which launched on the Boston campus in April, hosted a reception Monday to kick off a workshop on microsystems technologies. As Northeastern’s new West Coast advanced technologies lab, NanoSI brought electrical and computer engineering faculty together with industry experts and graduate students visiting from the Boston campus.
“There’s no greater place to do this than Oakland,” said David Horsley, professor of electrical and computer engineering and NanoSI deputy director. With its location near Silicon Valley, the new institute is poised to do work that is “transformative for the community,” he said.
The bicoastal institute will focus on designing, testing and validating the tiny silicon chips crucial to advanced technologies including zero-power sensing, 5G/6G communications, AI, quantum information science and nanomedicine. The new Oakland facility includes a lab, offices for six faculty members and workspaces for 26 graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. Outside is a forest of tall eucalyptus trees.
“I think this campus is suited to creative thinking,” said first-year Northeastern electrical engineering graduate student Kapil Saha. “It’s calm to be in nature.”
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
The new Oakland facility includes a lab, offices for six faculty members, and workspaces for 26 graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. Photo by Greer Rivera for Northeastern University
The institute creates collaboration opportunities for researchers and students on different Northeastern campuses, which is one reason why Saha and other students from the Boston campus made the trip to Oakland. They wanted to see for themselves what type of work will be possible.
“It will be an institute unlike any other,” said Ph.D. candidate Ryan Tetro. “It’s bicoastal, but it’s one group doing the same research.”
Part of the institute’s mission, Tetro said, is to help the United States become “chip independent” at a time when demand for chips is growing exponentially and the federal government is investing in the domestic semiconductor industry.
President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan CHIPS Act—Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors—in 2022, allocating $50 billion to U.S. startups and industry. Northeastern University received one of the first grants from the CHIPS Act’s Wireless Innovation Fund to test approaches to building open and interoperable next-generation wireless networks.
Read Full Story at Northeastern Global News