Conference: 83rd Device Research Conference

About This Grant

The annual Device Research Conference, which is currently in its 83 rd year, is the premier forum for innovative and newly-emerging semiconductor devices. One of the key features of DRC is the balanced participation of students and leading world experts in the field, which provides a unique learning and training opportunity for the student participants. Specifically, in addition to contributed oral talks and posters, the 2025 DRC will offer a half-day technical short course taught by prominent experts, three plenary sessions and 38 invited talks by academic and industry leaders, and an evening rump session at which panelists interact with attendees to debate a technical topic of particular current importance. This year, the rump session will focus on: “Who defines important research directions for the field? Academia, industry or funding agencies?”. The short-course title for this year is “Heterogeneous Integration”, and the tutorial will be “Device Modeling”. In addition, to encourage student engagement, the DRC gives awards every year for the Best Student Paper Award and the Best Student Poster Award. NSF support for the DRC 2025 will provide student participants with the opportunity to gain exposure to new materials and devices, their basic physics, and their engineering applications. Semiconductor devices are key to all modern technology, and continued innovations are needed to achieve high-performance computing, robust high-speed communications, machine learning, image and video processing, as well as energy-efficient and sustainable power generation and control. For continued U.S. leadership in these important fields, it is critical that the next generation of STEM researchers be trained to address emerging needs for electronic, optoelectronic and quantum devices. Federal investments in the semiconductor manufacturing industry through the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 make the training of device engineers even more imperative so we can provide the skilled workforce that will support expansion of domestic chip production. For dissemination, attendance at the conference and short course is subsidized for all students, and presenting authors can elect to make their abstracts available online through IEEE Xplore. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.