• Luc Van den hove, Imec
• David Anderson, NY CREATES
• Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, The Ohio State University
• Phillip Singerman, CSIS
• Moderated by Sree Ramaswamy, Department of Commerce

Sree Ramaswamy, Department of Commerce

“…the challenge…particularly when it comes to innovation ecosystems, it is really hard to define up front what makes a regional innovation ecosystem successful…”

“So, you know, one of the things that I’ve noticed in the last couple of years in my time at Commerce is that in the discussions and the framing of the CHIPS Act it is often framed as a federal incentive program to create incentives for the private sector to make R&D and manufacturing investments. Now, that is a correct framing but it’s not quite a complete framing, right, because it misses out on this really important third party, this ecosystem of regional, state, and local actors who are sometimes governments, sometimes nonprofits and universities, sometimes consortia of companies, and there’s quite a rich network of that ecosystem.

And so we at Commerce have always from the very beginning thought of this as almost a three-party arrangement between the Commerce, CHIPS program, the private sector, and this network in the middle. And if you look at, for instance, one of the first papers that we issued back in September of 2022 right after the president had signed the CHIPS Act we issued a strategy paper that talked about some of these broad goals for CHIPS’ implementation and in that paper we had a couple of remarks and I just wanted to call that out.

“And so we called that out early on as our way of signaling to folks that that regional ecosystem really matters  – we want to think about this from a competitiveness standpoint.”

We laid out a bunch of examples of how you could think about these sorts of initiatives. But, you know, the challenge with that is, particularly when it comes to innovation ecosystems, it is really hard to define up front what makes a regional innovation ecosystem successful, right?   We all know the stories of Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina and the Bell Labs Ecosystem and Route 128 in Boston. We all know those stories. But we also know that several of these initiatives have been tried and have failed. Some have succeeded but only to a point and never really caught fire. Some have succeeded and then eventually faded away and died. And so one of the things that I’m hoping to get from this panel discussion is a sense from the folks who are going to be joining me how do you solve these problems?  How do you identify up front some of the key ingredients that make a regional research ecosystem successful?  and what does that mean for both the participants in that ecosystem and for folks in the private sector who will be engaging with that ecosystem and for folks at Commerce and the federal government who will be part of that arrangement to think about how to build these partnerships?”

Luc Van den hove, Imec

Luc Van den hove is president and CEO of Imec. Imec started as the Interuniversity Microelectronics Consortium back in 1984. Van den hove has been at Imec since its inception and is one of the founders. He is now today CEO and president.

“…we have to optimize the technology to specific system requirements.”

“…let me start with kind of focusing on what we believe are the key assets that made Imec to what it is today…on the one hand, the infrastructure which we’ve built up over the four decades of our existence since 1984. And that kind of was brought together in two major cleanrooms of 12,000 square meter in which we have installed kind of leading-edge tools from basically all major manufacturers.  we have kind of made Imec as a kind of a hub where a lot of these suppliers are testing out a lot of their newest innovations, because they need access to this infrastructure to test out how their process module works in combination with the other modules. 

The most important asset, though, I think is the team that we built out. Step by step, over 40 years, we built out a team that I believe is extremely experienced. About 5,500 people, including about 700 residents from the companies with whom we work, and also 850 Ph.D. students, who are obtaining their Ph.D. from one of the universities with whom we work, but they do their research program full time at Imec, levering our infrastructure. This is a very effective way to build very close interactions with – and partnerships with universities.

“…a…key third asset is clearly the ecosystem. Sree already referred to it. We’re kind of working these days with virtually any company that is active in the semiconductor value chain. These are all the major IDMs, the foundries, the manufacturing companies, all of the top ones. But also the fabless companies, and the hyper-scalers, because more and more we see this need to kind of connect design and system know-how with technology know-how. It’s not, like, one roadmap that defines the future. There’s a lot of divergence in these roadmaps. And we have to optimize the technology to specific system requirements. And so we need to know the system – the system – we need to be experts also on the system side.

“The solution for an application in health care will be very different from the automotive solutions. Of course, there’s a lot of commonality in the basic technology…”

…the core of what we do is really on the semiconductor technology, the chip technology. That’s the enabler, and that’s where our core competence is. But whereas the focus of the applications for chips in the past decades have mostly been the ICT world, we now see phenomenal opportunities in basically any industry. But as I mentioned before, the technology really needs to be tuned to a specific application. The solution for an application in health care will be very different from the automotive solutions. Of course, there’s a lot of commonality in the basic technology, but you have to tune the technology towards these applications.   And this also requires an investment into understanding those application fields and areas. Which are, of course, very hot topics these days are the automotive sector. But we believe future areas – fields like health care – are going to be also extremely important. 

For the opening remarks and insights from the panel discussion and Q and A, find the panel transcript at this link.     Find the video from the panel here – Panel 3: Building Regional Research Ecosystems  Transcripts and video on other topics – such as Integrating Approaches to Regional Innovation, Industry Perspectives on the CHIPS Act, andBuilding the Semiconductor Workforce can be found at this link. 

Additional Panelist bios and Innovation Ecosystem Case Studies for your review include:  

David Anderson, NY CREATES

Anderson is the President of NY CREATES (the New York Center for Research, Economic Advancement, Technology, Engineering, and Science).  NY CREATES is the home of Albany NanoTech, which anchors a really diverse ecosystem that includes not just  IBM and Tokyo Electron and Applied Materials in Albany; it extends to Global Foundries in Malta. In his remarks, Anderson talks about this ecosystem.   Anderson was  – before his role at NY CREATES – was with SEMI Americas. SEMI is the industry association that represents the equipment and material suppliers to the semiconductor industry. 

Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, The Ohio State University

Grejner-Brzezinska is a distinguished university professor at the Ohio State University. She has a  long and pioneering history of research in global positioning systems and global navigation systems. She is also one of the leaders of OSU’s Knowledge Enterprise, which is a program to develop the research capabilities of researchers and research teams at OSU and also expand OSU’s research portfolio and expanded societal impact of that research portfolio. She has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. President Biden recently appointed her to the National Science Board. She is also the driving force behind a relatively new organization called the Midwest Semiconductor Network.  This is a coalition of universities driven by OSU with the goal of setting up a wider ecosystem in the Midwest to focus on research, training, and capability building across the ecosystem. This is exactly the sort of coalition that Commerce envisions as seeing – as being quoted as this wider chips agenda of building regional ecosystems that has scale and sustainability over time.

Phillip Singerman, CSIS

Singerman is a trusted advisor on regional economic development to many policy institutes and to many technology initiatives.  He has more than 35 years of technology-based economic development experience. He was the first CEO of the Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania and of the Maryland Technology Development Corporation, both of which are two of the longest-lasting public-private partnerships in technology development and economic development in the U.S. He was also at the Department of Commerce for many years whjere he was the Assistant Secretary for Economic Development and well as a tenure at NIST. NIST is now the official home of the CHIPS Program within the Department of Commerce.  While at NIST, he spearheaded the creation of the Manufacturing USA Network and also led the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, both of which are good examples of federal, state, and industry trilateral partnerships.  

Additional Resources

Technology Convergence and Market Disruption: Rapid advancements in technology are changing market dynamics and user expectations. See: Disruptive and Exponential Technologies.

Computer Chip Supply Chain Vulnerabilities: Chip shortages have already disrupted various industries. The geopolitical aspect of the chip supply chain necessitates comprehensive strategic planning and risk mitigation. See: Chip Stratigame

The Inevitable Acceleration of Reshoring and its Challenges: The momentum towards reshoring, nearshoring, and friendshoring signals a global shift towards regional self-reliance. Each region will emphasize local manufacturing, food production, energy generation, defense, and automation. Reshoring is a complex process, with numerous examples of failures stemming from underestimating intricacies. Comprehensive analyses encompassing various facets, from engineering to finance, are essential for successful reshoring endeavors. See: Opportunities for Advantage.