This grant supports an ongoing applied research program with Allegro Microsystems, a Worcester-based semiconductor design and manufacturing company. The company is funding three WPI students doing summer research in ways to better manufacture integrated circuits.
Grant Title: “Semiconductor Device Simulation”
Principal Investigator: John McNeill, Professor and Head, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Funding Amount: $45,481 for One Year
Award Date: March 29, 2018
Sponsor: Allegro Microsystems LLC
The WPI student researchers will work on changing the manufacturing process to make transistors, circuits, and chips work faster, emit less heat, and use less power, for example. During last summer’s company-sponsored project, students designed modified processes and predicted their performance. This year three students, working full-time on the research, will evaluate the chips that were made with that process; design next-generation chips that will be tested next summer, and develop software for models that will predict performance. The researchers are all juniors, and some will be doing related MQP work in the coming year. This is at least the fifth year of the Allegro Microsystems-sponsored summer research program. The company has been sponsoring MQP teams in McNeill’s lab for the past 20 years.