Purdue-led project awarded $5 million for Greater Lafayette to grow semiconductor industry workforce

WEST LAFAYETTE — A Purdue University-led venture will obtain $5 million in funding by way of a Greater Lafayette financial growth initiative to help the predicted regional workforce demand from customers in the promising semiconductor producing market, Purdue and local community officials announced Wednesday (Dec. 7).

Purdue partnered on a Increased Lafayette Commerce proposal that highlighted around 40 regional projects created to keep and bring in workforce talent by the condition of Indiana’s Regional Economic Acceleration and Growth Initiative, or READI. In December 2021, the six-county Better Lafayette region was awarded $30 million from the state’s $500 million READI fund, an allocation that was authorised by the Indiana Common Assembly in its 2021 session.

In the announcement, Purdue and Bigger Lafayette officials uncovered the seven regional READI assignments that would share the $30 million in funding, which include:

• $5 million for the Purdue-Ivy Tech Community College partnership on the Semiconductors Workforce Enhancement Task to create the talent pipeline of large school and college or university students and raise technician and engineer teaching to aid the region’s semiconductor field.
• $7 million for developing infrastructure to assist a passenger terminal at Purdue College Airport to help provide business air services back again to Larger Lafayette. The undertaking crew at Purdue Airport is performing to establish other sources of funding. Just after fundraising is completed, the challenge timeline will be announced. The very last commercial flight from Purdue Airport was in 2004.

The READI grant is a different stage in Purdue’s attempts to improve the region’s semiconductor business. (Purdue College photo/Charles Jischke)
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“We are immensely proud to be a component of the Greater Lafayette group and to go on to lead to its vibrancy,” reported Mung Chiang, president-elect and govt vice president for strategic initiatives at Purdue. “We thank the READI board and the fantastic READI program by Gov. (Eric) Holcomb and IEDC (Indiana Financial Enhancement Corp.) that presents a crucial option for financial progress. This area that features Tippecanoe County is nicely poised to turn out to be an motor in making the ‘hard-tech corridor’ of our condition.”

The Semiconductors Workforce Growth Job is geared to aid the approach by Bloomington, Minnesota-based SkyWater Engineering to devote $1.8 billion for finding a main semiconductor producing facility in Discovery Park District at Purdue.

Announced in July, the SkyWater project is anticipated to generate 750 Greater Lafayette work — 350 experts and production staff members earning $60,000 a year 200 functions engineering and services, upkeep, and tech aid positions at yearly salaries of $100,000 and 200 research and enhancement engineering, technology improvement and administration positions earning $130,000 a year.

“Purdue is delighted to deepen our collaboration with Ivy Tech to generate and implement semiconductor workforce development plans that will benefit the entire Greater Lafayette area,” stated Mark Lundstrom, interim dean of Purdue’s Higher education of Engineering.

“With semiconductor firms and their suppliers and service vendors, the resulting economic influence in the area will be huge,” Lundstrom included, “and this will only be doable with a talent pipeline that consists of significant college graduates, skilled technicians with AS levels, and engineers with BS, MS and PhD levels.”

The Purdue-Ivy Tech workforce partnership also aligns with a Purdue Study Foundation objective to operate with the Indiana Uplands area and Naval Floor Warfare Centre, Crane, to leverage Purdue’s R&D in the semiconductor house. Experiments display that each single semiconductor position in the United States, for illustration, supports 5.7 other careers in the economic climate. 

Outlined by Gov. Holcomb in his Point out of the Condition address in January, READI leveraged $500 million from federal COVID-19 relief cash for Indiana that could be allocated for areas throughout the condition to bounce-commence larger financial development initiatives.

In its 74-web page proposal to the state’s READI plan in September 2021, Increased Lafayette submitted a funding ask for for 43 regional initiatives totaling $131 million. Greater Lafayette was between 17 areas, with each other representing all 92 Indiana counties, that took gain of the READI software. The project grants have to be matched by nearby general public, personal or philanthropic cash.

About Bigger Lafayette Commerce
Headquartered in Lafayette, Indiana, Higher Lafayette Commerce Neighborhood and Financial Growth Basis is a nonprofit 501©3 corporation and was recognized in 2016 for charitable and education and learning reasons to assist the promotion of financial and local community enhancement in Higher Lafayette of the point out of Indiana. The basis supports the attempts of Bigger Lafayette Commerce and its economic growth partners in Fountain, Warren, Benton, White and Carroll counties and is the convener and fiscal agent for Increased Lafayette and the Bigger Lafayette Economic Alliance. 

About Purdue College

Purdue University is a leading public investigate establishment building simple remedies to today’s toughest troubles. Ranked in every single of the very last 5 years as one particular of the 10 Most Innovative universities in the United States by U.S. News & Environment Report, Purdue provides world-changing study and out-of-this-globe discovery. Fully commited to palms-on and online, genuine-environment learning, Purdue gives a transformative education to all. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue has frozen tuition and most fees at 2012-13 ranges, enabling much more college students than at any time to graduate credit card debt-totally free. See how Purdue in no way stops in the persistent pursuit of the next big leap at https://purdue.edu/.

Author: Phillip Fiorini, pfiorini@purdue.edu

Media make contact with: Tim Doty, doty2@purdue.edu