Small Science
Creates Big Dividends

Chris Tuschen peers into a monitor. He fiddles with a tangle of wires connected to his homework: a simple microchip. The UO graduate student smiles. “Hey! That’s what it should look like.” He carefully puts the chip in a tiny petri dish and writes his name on it.

Students in the UO microchip master’s program sometimes spend ten-hour stretches in the lab, making chips, making mistakes and learning how to make semiconductors. After intense summer classes and lab work, Chris entered a nine-month internship with Hynix, a semiconductor company that’s already offered him a job. More than 90 percent of the students are hired straight from the program.

The microchip program is just one example of how the UO Materials Science Institute prepares students—and Oregon—for tomorrow’s economy.