Courtesy of University of Vermont
Semiconductor manufacturing
The federal government has selected the Burlington area as one of 31 small and rural regions nationwide that will be eligible for millions of dollars in aid for scientific and technological innovation.
The Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs program, or
Tech Hubs, is an effort to push energy, ideas and money for developing semiconductors, clean energy and biotechnology toward out-of-the-way places.
“For too long, economic growth and opportunity has clustered in a few cities on the coasts,”
the White House said in announcing the selection of the sites, which include regions in Montana, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Kansas. The hubs were chosen from more than 370 applications, the announcement said.
The selection doesn’t mean more federal dollars will automatically flow to Vermont, but it positions nonprofits, colleges and universities, public projects, and private companies in the 31 sites to compete for as much as $75 million to invest in innovation and economic development.
In Burlington, the money would go to the University of Vermont, the Vermont State Colleges System and other institutions to support startup companies and workforce training in the area of semiconductor manufacturing, long a foundational industry anchored by the GlobalFoundries manufacturing plant in Essex Junction.
UVM applied for the U.S. Economic Development Administration program with the Malta, N.Y.-based GlobalFoundries. The two specified that the money would be used to advance gallium nitride technology, or GaN, an emerging material in semiconductor manufacturing, said Kirk Dombrowski, UVM's vice president for research.
While there are larger chipmakers in the U.S. than the Essex Junction plant, some of them in similarly out-of-the-way areas, Dombrowski said the Burlington area was chosen because of the chipmaker's close relationship with UVM. GlobalFoundries, which reported it had 2,100 Vermont employees last year, trains UVM students through internships and other programs, and the two institutions recently created a fabrication laboratory at UVM with a clean room — the highly controlled environment that is used for manufacturing semiconductor chips — and a chip testing facility.
Students can design microchips through their studies and produce prototypes at the GlobalFoundries plant, Dombrowski said.
Efforts to stimulate the growth of technology companies in rural areas have been stymied by workforce shortages, a problem that has bedeviled employers in the fast-growing Burlington area. Dombrowski said the partnerships with GlobalFoundries are an effort to alleviate that by producing exactly the kind of graduates the fabrication plant is looking for. Students from UVM’s engineering department, its Sustainable Innovation MBA program and its environmental sciences program have worked at GlobalFoundries in chip manufacturing and also in areas such as HR and advancing clean energy initiatives.
“That can help us keep some of our students in Vermont, which is a big part of our goal,” he said on Monday.
Dombrowski thinks part of the draw for the Tech Hubs program is UVM's growing profile as a major research institution. It drew about $260 million in federal grants and contracts, gifts in support of research, corporate contracts, and patent revenue last year. That’s about twice as much money as the state’s flagship university amassed from those sources in 2019, and it’s more than UVM makes from undergraduate tuition.
“These factories are in a robust relationship with a leading research university,” he said.
The goal of Tech Hubs is to accelerate that growth.
"A Tech Hubs Designation is a strong endorsement of a region’s plan to supercharge a critical technology ecosystem and become a global leader over the next decade," the U.S. Department of Commerce said in an overview of the program.
UVM president Suresh Garimella thanked the State of Vermont and the Vermont State Colleges System for working with GlobalFoundries and UVM on the project application. In a statement, Garimella said the partners have helped establish the Burlington area as a national center for semiconductor innovation. Students from the educational institutions, including the Community College of Vermont, also work with smaller chipmakers such as Marvell Technology and Green Mountain Semiconductor, both in Burlington. And UVM has been working with a chip design software company in Burlington, Mass.
“All of these things together look like the start of an ecosystem already,” Dombrowski said.
The Vermont group will now apply for the second phase of the program, which could lead to grants of $50 million to $75 million.
The New Hampshire Tech Hub is focused on the Manchester, N.H.-based Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute, which works with regenerative therapies that address chronic disease and organ failure, the Department of Commerce said.