Dr. Nathaniel Cady, associate dean for research and a professor in the Department of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at UAlbany’s College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering, discusses how higher ed is responding to the urgent call for increased semiconductor R&D and manufacturing in the U.S. Among the topics Dr. Cady addresses are the Chips and Science Act of 2022 and its Microelectronics Commons program, a network of regional technology hubs acting on a shared mission: to expand the nation’s global leadership in microelectronics; and the role UAlbany is playing as a leader in nano and semiconductor education and workforce training through its longstanding expertise and partnerships in the field, as well as its innovative new initiatives like AI Plus, a holistic approach to integrating teaching and learning about AI throughout all university academic and research programs.
Bio for Dr. Nathaniel Cady
UAlbany Launches New Programs in Semiconductor Engineering
Q&A With CNSE’s Nate Cady: Why Everyone is Talking About Semiconductors
University at Albany's College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering
UAlbany's AI Plus
Chips and Science Act of 2022 -- information on the NSF Chips and Science page
The Engagement Ring, Episode 25: ‘Shoring Up’ Education and Workforce Training to Meet America’s Semiconductor Research and Manufacturing Needs
[Lively, upbeat theme music plays as program host Mary Hunt introduces the program and plays excerpts from the program.]
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Welcome to The Engagement Ring, your connection to an ever-widening network of higher education professionals, scholars, and community partners, working to make the world a better place. I'm Mary Hunt. Today on the podcast…
NATE CADY:
The main goal of the Chips and Science Act was to onshore U.S. production of chips. So, what had happened over the years is that the U.S. went from being one of the major manufacturers of computer chips to losing that market share to chips produced in other countries.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
A little over two years ago, President Biden signed the Chips and Science Act into law, paving the way for nearly $53 billion in funding to incentivize private investment in the U.S. semiconductor industry and stimulate and strengthen research and development in STEM education, an enormous opportunity for American businesses and educational institutions, indeed, but one not without significant challenges. For instance, building and training a workforce that has the specialized education and skills to support a rapidly expanding and evolving industry with national importance.
NATE CADY
I see us as an educational and workforce training pipeline to be able to feed that industry and to feed really what's needed to make sure we can sustain it.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT
I'll talk with Nate Cady of the University at Albany's College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering, Dr. Cady has been exploring answers to a question that may hold the key to the future of the industry.
NATE CADY:
How do we reach out into the community, really, and get kids excited about STEM-based careers, and then, more specifically, what we're doing in this focused area of microelectronics and semiconductors?
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Here's my conversation with Nate Cady…
MARY HUNT:
Welcome to the podcast, Nate.
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NATE CADY:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
MARY HUNT:
Oh, it's a pleasure. Nate, you're a microbiologist by training. How did you come to be involved with the College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering.
NATE CADY:
Yeah, so microbiologists study small stuff to begin with. So, they study bacteria and viruses. And during my undergraduate work at Cornell, I was studying bacteria and how they were navigating little mazes that I made at the Nanofabrication facility there. And it kind of piqued my interest in what can we do to, you know, make systems that can actually measure biology at its fundamental size scale, so at the cellular level, and then at the molecular level as well. And so, I got really interested in the field. I did my graduate work also in microbiology, but with a real focus on using chips, you know, really microchips, to diagnose diseases, and that led me to look for a career in academia where I could still do work like that. And so, it led me right here to Albany in the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the time, which was just starting up and starting to hire biologists who were doing work that combined nanotechnology and biology.
MARY HUNT:
So how many years have you been with the University of Albany?
NATE CADY:
I've been here 18 years. July was my 18th year anniversary.
MARY HUNT:
Happy anniversary! Happy belated anniversary!
NATE CADY:
Thank you.
[Laughter]
MARY HUNT:
What does the field of nanotechnology incorporate? What is nanotechnology?
NATE CADY:
So, nano can tend to be a sort of a catch all. So, nano really means one one-billionth of something. And in our frame of reference, it's one one-billionth of a meter. So, you take one meter, or three feet, divide it into a billion parts, and you've got a nanometer. And so, nanotechnology really takes science and engineering that deals with manipulating matter or using matter or doing science at that really small length scale and tries to apply it to a lot of different engineering problems that are out there. So, one of things that people hear a lot about these days is the microchip industry, or semiconductors. And at the heart of all of that is we're essentially taking atoms and molecules and moving them around, shaping them at that nanometer and smaller actually size scale to make devices. And so, we're making little switches or memory elements that can be used to make these really complicated chips. But nanotechnology goes well beyond that. As I mentioned, in my graduate work I studied microbiology and making really small systems that could measure individual cells or molecules, and then nanotechnology bridges into areas of chemistry, other engineering disciplines, and it's really broad, because it's fundamentally about really studying that small, small part of our universe.
MARY HUNT:
As you mentioned, there's a lot of emphasis on the semiconductor industry these days, particularly with the Chips and Science Act of 2022, that came out just a couple of years ago. Hard to believe it was a couple years already. What is a semiconductor and is it synonymous with chip? Are those terms interchangeable?
NATE CADY:
The terms are not completely interchangeable. They overlap. Semiconductor is really a material that can conduct electricity in certain conditions, or block or not conduct electricity in other conditions. And silicon, which is the fundamental material that we make most computer chips out of, happens to be a semiconductor. And so, when you do the right thing to that semiconductor material, you can turn it into a conductor, you can turn it into a switch, you can turn it into part of a memory device. And so, so really, semiconductors are part of most of the chips that we interact with or use in devices in the world. But there, there are other devices that don't necessarily use a semiconductor. And a case in point… so, I work here at the College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering, and part of that college is located at the Albany Nanotech Facility. And the clean rooms here, which are these big sort of cavernous rooms where we work on this really small stuff. We're not only building chips with semiconductors; we're also building chips that use light to communicate data, to be able to switch to make measurements. And that's not necessarily using a semiconductor. You know, certain parts of that are but, but it's not contingent on semiconductors. So, semiconductors are present om most chips, but they don't necessarily… It's not synonymous with chip.
MARY HUNT:
It's funny. Some of us, the uninitiated, like myself, may think of chips and semiconductors, and think of, you know, electronics, entertainment devices, just sort of common everyday things, that make our lives easier in that way, or bring us enjoyment. But back to your research… there's very important, life-enhancing or life-saving devices, techniques that you're working on, research you're doing in this field. I want to talk a little bit more about the kind of work that you're doing in your research and how it dovetails with this field.
NATE CADY:
Sure. So, most of my work in this field has been in the area of diagnostics, or being able to diagnose diseases. So, before I came to UAlbany, I was working on devices that could measure harmful bacteria in food. So, we were looking at, you know, do food items contain dangerous bacteria like E coli or listeria? And actually, you hear about outbreaks all the time and big recalls. There was just a listeria-based outbreak, actually a major recall a few weeks ago that was in the news. And then when I came to UAlbany, I continued to do work in this area, which really the area could probably be called biosensors, or making devices that are sensing something biological. And most of my work these days is focused on measuring diseases or measuring whether a person has had a disease based on their immune response. And so, during Covid, we were developing a sensor that could measure antibodies that people produced, whether they were sick with Covid or whether they had been immunized or had the vaccine. And so, we could measure those antibody levels. We actually could measure lots of different antibodies at one time on these chips that we were building. And when Covid started winding down, we shifted our focus a little bit, and we started looking at Lyme Disease as our primary disease target. And so, we started converting these chips that we had built for Covid diagnostics and said, can we put a lot of different disease targets on a single chip and be able to measure whether or not a person had been exposed to the bacteria that caused, would cause Lyme Disease, and whether we think that they actually have an active infection or not? And that's mainly because it's actually really challenging to diagnose Lyme Disease. Sure, there are folks listening who know someone or maybe have had Lyme themselves, and it's a really tough problem to be able to get a really good accurate diagnosis for Lyme. So, the work that we're doing is using these chips that we build in our clean room facilities here at the college. We make these nanoscale optical devices that are able to measure very small quantities of biological molecules and in this case, antibodies. But we've gone beyond that as well. We've collaborated on lots of other projects. We've built substrates, or whatever you might call scaffolds, to grow cells on top of. We've made surfaces that were nano and micro patterns, so very small-scale shapes and patterns on the surface that were resistant to bacteria attachment. So, we call those surfaces that prevent biofouling or antifouling surfaces. And we've even made small gel-like materials that could be used to release drugs. So, we were working with a company for a while that was making little hydrogel structures that you could put in your eyes to deliver drugs over a long amount of time for people with various eye conditions. So, we, we tend to be sort of a laboratory that that does a lot of things. We're good at building stuff. We're good at characterizing the things we build. And so, we sort of have a lot of fun looking for, you know, collaboration to work with, and being able to apply what we can do in with nanotechnology and with both nano and micro scale fabrication to do interesting things.
MARY HUNT:
Are your students working side by side with you on this both undergraduate and graduate or…
NATE CADY:
"Yeah, we have, we have students ranging from bachelor's degrees, so undergraduate students to master’s and PhD students, all working in the laboratory. I have postdocs who have finished a PhD somewhere else and have come here to do work after their PhD, in between that and either a faculty career or an industry career. And I don't get in the laboratory as much as I would like to, but I do still get my hands dirty from time to time, so it's fun.
MARY HUNT:
You know, I mentioned the Chips and Science Act before. It promises to bring billions of dollars of investment to research and development in the semiconductor industry. And one of the things that I've heard said about it is that it will transform our communities. It will uplift communities, perhaps that aren’t doing as well as they could. It'll provide new opportunities. How do you think the Chips and Science Act will affect our communities or the way we live, do work? What do we need to know about it? What does the layman need to know about it?
NATE CADY
I think the main goal of the Chips and Science Act was to onshore U.S. production of chips. So, what had happened over the years is that the U.S. went from being one of the major manufacturers of computer chips to losing that market share to chips produced in other countries. And so, even though we do some of the bulk of chip design, we really don't make as many chips in this country anymore. So that can lead to shortages in being able to purchase chips. And people saw that, especially during Covid, and the auto industry was having trouble getting chips. People are having trouble getting their cars after that. So, one piece of the Chips Act is, if we really make these investments in the U.S. into more manufacturing, more R&D, that leads to new types of chips, packaging of chips. It's a strange issue, but when you make a bare silicon chip, that's not the end of the story. The chip has to be put in essentially, a ceramic, or ceramic or plastic package, and then it looks like the chips you might have seen on a circuit board. And so that's a pretty complicated process. And again, that's something that happens mainly overseas and not in the U.S. So how does that translate into translate into transforming our communities? I think what it means is that there will be jobs in the manufacturing industry. And so, we've seen a few things in New York State. So Global Foundries recently had investments announced from the Chips and Science Act to expand their facilities. So, I think we'll see expansion of the site in Malta for more manufacturing, which will require more jobs, not only once that factory is built out, but also for the construction of those buildings, for maintaining all of the equipment, all those other pieces that go along with a fabrication facility. But we also saw the huge announcement for the Micron facility out near Syracuse. And so that's another… it's a mega factory, really, which will be a huge draw for a workforce. And so, workforce is something that's we hear all the time now, how are we going to train a workforce? How are we going to get people to move to the state, or that we grow from within the state to be able to fill out these jobs in these new companies? But I think the last piece of it is there are dollars in the Chips Act for research and development as well. And so here at UAlbany, and here where I work, primarily at the Albany Nanotech complex, we're an R&D facility. And so we are, we are training the students who eventually will go on to be those researchers. But we're also working with the companies who are developing the next best technologies that we'll see coming down the line. And so, you know, I think I see, I see us as an educational and workforce training pipeline to be able to feed that industry and to feed really what's needed to make sure we can sustain it.
MARY HUNT:
Yeah, universities are expected to play a big role in the rollout of the act and in supporting the ambitious goals of the act. Can you talk in more specifics about what you think UAlbany can contribute to that, whether it's in terms of education or workforce development? Is there a specialty or an expertise you feel the faculty here at the University will bring?
NATE CADY:
UAlbany has, you know, several areas of expertise. So, the within the College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering, we have the Department of Nanoscale Science and Engineering with a couple of different degrees. We have a nanoscale science and a nanoscale engineering PhD, masters and bachelor's programs, as well as a nano-bioscience program at the PhD and master's level. So those degrees are very tailored towards exactly what we've been talking about with chips and semiconductors. We also have an electrical and computer engineering department, computer science department and an environmental sustainable engineering department, and all those departments actually play a role in training students that will be, you know, part of this, this workforce, and that goes from electrical engineers who will be designing chips to computer scientists that need to program them, plus all of the equipment and processes that need to happen to make a chip. And then, even in environmental sustainable engineering, there's a big focus right now on the sustainability of the chip industry and of that process of building chips, like a lot of other industries, right down to, you know, emissions controls, what's happening with the waste products that come away from that process. How do you reclaim chips? You see this with the with batteries as well. For electric vehicles, you know, how do you actually deal with that battery once the lifetime of the car is over? Similar thing for chips. How can you reclaim some of the precious materials that are part of those chips? So, I think, just from a degree program standpoint, we have, we're poised to be able to train students at the bachelor's, master's and PhD level. But we also do a lot with outreach and education in what we call the kindergarten to 12th grade, or the K through 12 pipeline. So, the key is, you know, we really need a lot of students that will enter our programs to then graduate with degrees. But how do you get kids excited about wanting to go into those fields? And so, I think that's part of our mission. It may not be a traditional part of our mission, but how do we reach out into the community, really, and get kids excited about STEM-based careers, and then, more specifically, what we're doing in this more maybe focused area of microelectronics and semiconductors?
MARY HUNT:
Yeah, last year, I remember we had, well, we continued the tradition of nano-day, nanotechnology, family, community day, which was fun. And this year. I know we're planning one again for November. So, it involved the faculty from CNSE. It involved our master teachers at UAlbany and a lot of staff, and it was a really big success, big turnout in the community. So, we're looking forward to doing that again this year.
NATE CADY:
Yeah, we were very excited. Nanovember is back.
MARY HUNT:
Yeah, Nanovember, yes. So, it's, hopefully, it's a long-standing tradition. You got me thinking about actually artificial intelligence. We hear a lot about semiconductors, but certainly no more than we hear about artificial intelligence these days. How does artificial intelligence play into all this, in terms of training and, you know, its needs for semiconductors and for power to run it and training students. I mean, talk about where that, where that fits in this whole picture.
NATE CADY:
Yes, I would say UAlbany, I think is becoming a pioneer and in how we address AI, and that's evident with our ai plus initiative across the campus. So really, the core of that initiative, we want to give all of our students a basic education in AI so they're what I would call AI literate. They may not be an expert in AI or programming an AI algorithm, but they understand what AI can do, what the implications of it are, and they're comfortable with, with the technology. So that's really important to say first is that UAlbany is really doing a great job with that initiative. From the angle of chips and semiconductors, AI is like a huge engine that's just has this huge demand for computing resources and computing capability. So, companies like Nvidia, who make GPU chips, which really are the workhorse chips behind a lot of training AI algorithms and then running those algorithms as well, there's a constant race, basically, to come up with more powerful chips that can perform more computations. And one of the areas that we really want to go into Is how do you do that more efficiently and with lower energy because there actually is a huge energy cost to being able to build larger AI models and be able to run these huge AI algorithms. So, you know, we're building new chips. We're building more chips, more powerful chips, but I think this, this comes full circle in that we actually are starting to really need AI to be able to do things like optimize some of the manufacturing processes for chips, and even for designing chips. And so the National Semiconductor Technology Center, which is part of the Chips Act funding, is going to release some funding announcements soon, including things like using AI to help with the design of chips, and also looking at, how do we develop things called digital twins, where you're making in software, essentially a model of the chip itself, of components of chips, or even the manufacturing plant that's making those chips, and being able to use that model to find efficiencies and look for problems before they happen in this twin like model of the entire system. So, I think it's a, it's a complicated interaction right now between providing the chips for AI, but then using AI to help optimize the rest of the process as well.
MARY HUNT:
New York State's also made a big investment in this area. Hasn't it?
NATE CADY:
Huge investment with Empire AI. Yeah, that's one of the major investments that New York has made, which I think we'll see, sort of democratize access to AI compute capabilities as one of the outcomes from that. A lot of individual universities and organizations have invested in AI infrastructure but making that available more largely to the SUNY system and other universities within New York State will really help to democratize that access and bring everybody forward. So, it's many thanks to New York State for that investment.
MARY HUNT:
Speaking of collaboration, I wanted to ask you about the Microelectronics Commons. What is that?
NATE CADY:
Sure. So, the Microelectronics Commons is a portion of the Chips Act funding that's basically run through the Department of Defense. And what the Department of Defense realized was that they have a need to be able to prototype chips. So, we call this the lab-to-fab pipeline find so a researcher in a lab like myself may come up with an idea for either a component for a chip or for an entire chip itself, but we can often have a hard time bringing that into manufacturing of a full-fledged prototype. The scaling of being able to do that is really challenging. It's very expensive, and so what the Microcommons attempts to do is, is to be able to provide a network of different hubs. There are eight hubs funded within the microelectronic commons across the United States, and each hub has a focus area of a certain specialty of types of chips or types of technology that they're capable of prototyping and then providing those prototypes to the Department of Defense and other government agencies. UAlbany is one of the five founding members of the NORDTECH Hub (Northeast Regional Defense Technology Hub), including RPI, Cornell, IBM and New York Creates. And our hub has a focus on a number of areas, but those areas include quantum computing as well as AI and secure edge computing, and so we're really focused in the hub on being able to do that lab-to-fab transition, so take university or even small business laboratory scale initial demonstrations of technology and then use facilities like the clean rooms here at Albany Nanotech, or even IBM, who has cleanroom facilities, Cornell has cleanroom facilities as well as RPI, and be able to bring those to fruition in full-fledged, chip-based prototypes.
MARY HUNT:
There's a lot to think about. There's a lot to plan for, isn't there? And a lot, I guess, a lot, you know, and a lot you don't know. What are you most excited about when you think about the future related to nanotechnology, semiconductor industry, AI? And what concerns you most?
NATE CADY:
So, let's start with concerns. First, I think the things that concern me most are, you know, a lot of people worry about AI and its implications socially, or what it's going to do to our workforce. And I think those are valid concerns. I actually am more concerned about the energy requirements of training AI and actually sustaining it. So one of the things that I think we really need to focus on, and people are focusing on this, but we need to spend even more time and effort is how do we do computing more efficiently, and how do we scale it efficiently so that we don't end up, you know, with AI being the single largest energy consumer on the planet. So, we have a lot of work to do to keep up with that. And so, groups like mine are trying to make what we call, you know, more efficient computing chips that mimic more how the human brain works. So, the human brain does an amazing amount of computing or calculation on a very small amount of energy. So how can we better mimic biology and how biology does computing on a very energy-efficient scale, and translate that into electronics or even optical computing devices that are capable of much more efficient computing? I guess I've sort of segued from what I see as a big challenge to one of the exciting areas. And for a while people talked a lot about a field called biomimicry. So how do we, how do we mimic what innovations that biology has made? So they could be, you know, looking at a bird's wing and how that might have inspired flight… of natural Velcro from a burdock, you know, that's able to act like Velcro, to now, and we're looking at, you know, ways of, you know, how the brain works, how neurons function to be able to inspire computing. So, I think that's, that's one of the exciting areas that I see is that synergy between biology and electronics and also medicine as well. So how do we use these technologies that we're developing and really drive improvements to medicine and therapeutics and diagnostics? \
MARY HUNT
I imagine that most of the students that you work with have an aptitude for technology, for this area, for science, and are excited by it… are very interested in it. What about those students, as you mentioned, who through programs like AI Plus, will start to see these technologies introduced into their field and sometimes it might be fields that were very low-tech to begin with, and they may feel like that doesn't feel like me? I don't fit there. What would you tell them, or how would you make them feel better, make them feel part of the future, part of this, or that this can enhance their work, that it’s not exclusionary. There's a place for them. And what kind of advice might you have if they're a little tentative about what the future holds in their future career or area of interest?
NATE CADY:
So, I think in general, we all can become technology adopters. So even someone who's in the field doing this type of research, it can be daunting or challenging to think of adopting a new technology, or about where we're going with new technologies. So, I would say it's keeping yourself informed of what's out there and having at least a baseline understanding of some of these new technologies is really important, and so that's one of the reasons I really like this AI Plus initiative at UAlbany. It is really giving students enough information to make informed decisions about what technology they're adopting or how they're using it. I would say for students who want to get involved, we have programming from the, you know, bachelor's level all the way through the graduate level. And actually, in our nano programs, we're really set up to be able to bring students in, really, from wherever they come. And so especially at the graduate level, there is some degree of specialization that certain research projects might require, but I've had students who were math majors, physics majors, chemistry majors, biology majors. I can't say whether I've had an English major or not, but we've had a lot of different backgrounds for students who come into our program and spend the first year really delving into a variety of different topic areas to get their background up to speed, to be able to then be successful in their research. I'd also say that we're now investing in some certificate programs and some microcredential programs, and that's potentially an easier way for students to start. So microcredentials and stackable certificate programs are becoming very popular. And so, we're doing that here at UAlbany, a number of other universities are doing that as well, where people can get a taste for this type of information, and this field, without taking on an entire degree program. And importantly, I think we see that as one of the mechanisms for people to upskill or even think about transitioning a career. You may be working in a career or a job that's not necessarily related this field. Can you start tackling some of these microcredential or certificate type of courses to get a taste of what you know, what this field of microelectronics and semiconductors is all about, and maybe get enough training to be able to allow you to make that jump? And so, I think we're excited about where those programs will lead. And we're always very excited, too, to talk to people and bring them into programs like you mentioned our Nano Days in November, to get people excited and talk to you about how you might be able to pursue a career.
[Theme music fades in.]
NATE CADY:
And I will say we work with people across the disciplines, and I think we see this with a lot of our industry partners as well. All of these companies that are that are hiring people for high tech jobs and building chips, you know, also have human resource departments, have construction departments, have folks that are helping to maintain the physical plant, and so it's not just about training bachelor and PhD and master's students. It's also in these STEM careers. It's also in all the support disciplines and types of careers out there that go into supporting the industry as a whole.
MARY HUNT:
I think your enthusiasm will be contagious.
NATE CADY:
Well, thank you.
MARY HUNT:
Nate Cady, thanks for being my guest today.
NATE CADY:
You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Nate Cady is associate dean for Research and a professor in the Department of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering at the University at Albany. Dr. Cady is also among the associate faculty at the University's RNA Institute. For more information on Dr. Cady's work, visit the resource page for this podcast online at the dash engagement dash ring dot simplecast dot com. The Engagement Ring is produced by the University at Albany's Office for Public Engagement. If you have questions or comments or want to share an idea for an upcoming podcast, email us at UAlbany O P E at Albany dot E D U.
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