Sen. Young: Purdue to play key role in semiconductors, hypersonics
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. − Sen. Todd Young visited the Discovery Park District at Purdue on Wednesday to discuss the CHIPS and Science Act and a budding partnership with Stratolaunch and Purdue.
What is the CHIPS and Science Act?
In August 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which “(makes) historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century,” according to the White House online brief.
“It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology,” the brief says, “and the workforce of the future to keep the United States the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence.”
Semiconductor research, development and production are included as some of the fields that the CHIPS and Science Act helped boost as well.
“The CHIPS and Science Act will unlock hundreds of billions more in private sector semiconductor investment across the country, including production essential to national defense and critical sectors,” the brief says.
Purdue’s connection
Young went into detail Purdue’s role in semiconductor production, hypersonic research and development and overall national security.
“Purdue will play an instrumental role in…the area of semiconductors,” Young said, “which has received most of the attention because that’s where the $52 billion in hard cash has been dedicated. But there’s an additional roughly $200 billion that’s been authorized for research activities. $52 billion will go to FABs (semiconductor fabrication plants), like SkyWaters of the world and similar companies.
“Purdue’s role is still to perform that world-class research in physics, in optics and all kinds of other fields…that will inform the development of these projects.”
Zack Krevor, CEO and president of Stratolaunch, touted Purdue’s presence in the ever increasingly important hypersonics industry.
“Purdue offers world class facilities and wind tunnels,” Krevor said. “…Our first project with Purdue is going to focus on how can we accelerate the time from design of a hypersonic vehicle to the actual flight…Some of the other folks do it in five to six years, and what we want to be able to do here working with Purdue is actually get that down to 18 months or faster.”
Stratolaunch is moving quickly on their plans for Purdue as the company has already made its first hire for a team they plan on building within Purdue that will focus on hypersonic research and development.
“We’re starting with one dedicated Stratolaunch employee, we’re hoping to go to three by the end of this year,” Krevor said. “And we are also sponsoring a research team of six to eight both faculty and students. We’d really like to grow that into the 20-30 area here, again leveraging the many different facilities and capabilities here (at Purdue).”
Margaret Christopherson is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. Email her at mchristopherson@jconline.com and follow her on Twitter @MargaretJC2.
