Texas Tech Receives $19 Million Grant to Further Semiconductor Innovation

Texas Tech University’s Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering received an additional Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund (TSIF) award of over $19 million toward the university’s continued pursuit of semiconductor innovation.

“We are grateful to Governor Abbott and state leaders for this investment in Texas Tech University and the state’s future,” said Texas Tech President Lawrence Schovanec. “This support will expand our ability to apply advanced computing to challenges that matter to Texas while preparing students to lead in an increasingly technology-driven world.”

Texas Tech previously earned TSIF awards to develop a new clean room and to develop wide/ultrawide bandgap semiconductors for use in harsh environments.

Conventional semiconductor design relies heavily on physics-based modeling. While this is an accurate setup, it can be computationally intensive and stymie the innovation process.

The funding of this award will help Texas Tech establish a next-generation computing cluster in Lubbock. Computing clusters leverage a network of interconnected high-performance servers designed to function as a single unified system to handle massive, parallel workloads.

This project will integrate artificial intelligence (AI) with high-fidelity simulation data and experimental results. This should shorten development cycles for next-generation semiconductor devices and materials.

Roland Faller, dean of Whitacre College of Engineering, said Texas Tech will be one of the first universities to have access to the newest generation of Nvidia chips to power the cluster.

“This specific award enables us to do things which we otherwise would not be able to do,” Faller said. “The impact is what really excites me. What I hope comes out of this award is exciting new research, not just with our faculty in engineering, but other fields across the university and potentially even collaborations with industry.”

Some of those projects include AI-driven materials discovery and modeling, AI-enabled epitaxial growth of ultrawide-bandgap semiconductors and investigating advanced semiconductor devices to target performance and efficiency.

Along with Faller, the research team consists of:

• Joseph Gauthier, assistant professor in Chemical Engineering and Sanderson Faculty Fellow
• Hongxing Jiang, Horn Distinguished Professor, Edward E. Whitacre Jr. Chair in Electrical & Computer Engineering and co-director of the Nanophotonics Center
• Ravindra Joshi, Electrical & Computer Engineering chair
• Taewoo Kim, assistant professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering
• Changzhi Li, associate dean of research and graduate programs and professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering
• Jingyu Lin, Horn Distinguished Professor, Linda F. Whitacre Chair in Electrical & Computer Engineering and co-director of the Nanophotonics Center
• Hieu P. Nguyen, professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering

Undergraduate and graduate students can expect this award to open the doors for transformative interdisciplinary research, training and professional experiences as they prepare to enter the semiconductor workforce.

“Ultimately, these experiences will help prepare a highly skilled workforce to support Texas’ growing semiconductor industry,” Li said. “This is truly a university-wide team effort, and the successful implementation of this research infrastructure reflects the strong spirit of collaboration across Texas Tech.”

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