From Intel and NXP Semiconductors to the under-construction Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) plants in the west Valley, greater Phoenix is home to some of the biggest names in the semiconductor industry, as well as countless smaller companies and suppliers moving their operations to the state.

With jobs in the industry projected to increase 33% by 2030, heady growth in the Silicon Desert equals labor demand. That’s why Dr. Trevor Thornton and Dr. Hongbin Yu, professors of electrical engineering at Arizona State University’s School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering (part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering), are on a mission to train the semiconductor workforce of the future.

ASU has a long history of semiconductor courses for undergraduate and graduate students. While those highly skilled positions play a key industry role, there’s also demand for semiconductor manufacturing technicians with less than four-year degrees. Funding from Intel, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and TSMC is aligned with training technicians to get those jobs in the workforce.

In 2023, Thornton and his colleagues helped launch a semiconductor manufacturing certificate program funded by the NSF that gives 12 military veterans per semester a small stipend to participate in the 16-week training. Rio Salado College coordinates recruitment, curriculum and hiring, while ASU provides two days a week of intensive hands-on training at their campus. At the end of the semester, participants hear from industry speakers from around the Valley about career opportunities.

Last summer, Intel provided an award that enabled ASU to create a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Undergraduate students work as interns in the cleanroom and with faculty during the summer, with a focus on attracting students from diverse backgrounds into STEM careers.

“We’re fortunate because not every university has an Intel plant in their backyard,” Thornton says. “One of the women who went through the program, for example, helped maintain tools in the cleanroom and later helped train the veterans when they came to ASU. It really brought it full circle, having just gone through that training herself.”

Yu’s initiatives are focused on a specialty within semiconductors: electronics packaging. In layman’s terms, it’s the process of taking large silicon wafers and turning them into smaller usable chips—protecting them and creating the dense electrical connections to communicate with other components.

In the past 18 months, Yu and his colleagues have developed three new courses on various aspects of electronics packaging, covering the fundamentals up to advanced processes and tools—with about 200 students already enrolled.

“The idea is to train students at the graduate level, but also have some components that can flow downstream to undergrad and public community colleges, and for retraining workers who want to expand or transition their careers,” he says. “We’re also working on creating an accelerator program in electronics packaging that’s less time consuming. Over the past year, we’ve been talking to packaging companies to learn what their needs are.”

Like semiconductors themselves, speed is of the essence. As an example, Yu cites Amkor, an international semiconductor assembly and testing company headquartered in Chandler that’s building a $2 billion facility in Peoria.“

Once they are up and running, they expect to hire 2,000 employees at that facility,” he says. “So they very urgently need to have workers who are trained and ready to go.”

Even though the semiconductor sector experienced a slowdown in the second half of 2023, more employment requests are emerging. “Several of our completers are currently employed and many employment decisions are pending,” says Rick Vaughn, Ph.D., faculty chair of STEM Initiatives at Rio Salado College. “In January, we were contacted by an employer who is immediately hiring 30 to 40 technicians in their warehouse to install photolithography tools for a client. While ASU has the heavy lift of supporting the hands-on technical labs, Rio Salado manages the student support role. Together, I think we are doing amazing things.”

Thornton understands from personal experience how cyclical the industry can be, having left the U.K. when their last manufacturing facilities were shuttered in 1998.“

There was big growth here in the Valley at the time,” he says. “Twenty-five years later, we’re seeing probably the largest investment in semiconductor manufacturing in a generation.”