Thirty college students and five high schoolers are at Wright State University learning about the semiconductor career field. They are part of the Intel -sponsored summer internship program.
The company is building a massive two chip production plants east of Columbus. In the next two years , it plans to hire thousands of workers.
Wright State and Central State u niversities are collaborating to train the area workforce for careers at Intel and others in the semiconductor industry, providing hands-on experience in microelectronic design and security, cleanroom operations, printed circuit board design and fabrication, and electronics additive manufacturing.
Fathi Imsaad , an assistant professor at Wright State , said training Ohioans for this industry will benefit the country’s national security.
"When COVID happens, we had a shortage of chips and we relied on other manufacturers outside of the United States," Imsaad said. "We want to bring manufacturers inside the United States for national security. We have to rely on our own industry so we need to make sure that we are self-sustained in terms of chips.”
At the sa me time, Imsaad said students will also learn how to ensure that chips from foreign countries are safe to use by U.S. companies and consumers.
“Students are trained in a assured and trusted microelectronics lab ," Imsaad said. "They learn how to make sure the hardware chips are protected from third-party attacks, are protected from modification attacks, are protected from insertion attacks or backdoors that can harm the availability or the reliability or security or trust of the microelectronics.”
Students are living on campus through July and each will receive a $5,000 stipend. Imsaad said the goal is to attract women and underrepresented groups to this career field.
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