U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT.nano laboratory Wednesday as part of a national push for increased domestic production of semiconductor chips.
Raimondo, alongside Cambridge mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, MIT president L. Rafael Reif and other leaders from MIT, toured the facility and spoke with faculty, students and startup owners who use the lab for their research.
“Semiconductors are the foundational science of our entire economy,” Raimondo said. “And unfortunately, America has fallen behind.”
The lab, which opened in 2018, provides facilities and resources to MIT faculty and students as well as outside partners to conduct nanotechnology research, which includes technology related to semiconductors. Since 2020, there has been a global shortage of semiconductor chips — found in everything from cell phones to cars — due to the pandemic, economic conflict with China and other supply chain issues.
President Joe Biden has been urging Congress to pass $52 billion in spending related to semiconductor manufacturing as part of the so-called Bipartisan Innovation Act. In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Biden said the Act would “make record investments in emerging technologies and American manufacturing.”
Raimondo said during her visit that the United States used to manufacture nearly 40% of the world’s semiconductors, but now only makes around 12%. She praised MIT’s facilties and research related to semiconductors and related nanotechnology.
After the tour, she told GBH News that MIT is the “gold standard” for collaboration between academia and industry.
“That’s what we need to do — a real hands-on collaboration,” Raimondo said. “Ultimately, what we need is the great ideas and research that are beginning in universities to be turned into products made at scale in America.”
Jesús del Alamo, a professor of electrical engineering at MIT, published a white paper last year calling on universities to take the lead in semiconductor and microtechnology research. Some of his students — including first-year undergraduates — presented their work to Raimondo during her tour.
“This is really wonderful a time to be involved in nanotechnology, to be involved in microelectronics,” del Alamo said, “because you can really have innovations that would launch the next nanoelectronics revolution that will carry us 50 more years into the future.”
