DAYTON, Ohio - Youngstown State University is part of a government effort to train engineers to design and develop trustworthy digital microelectronic devices and systems for America’s defense.

YSU and four other Ohio academic institutions have joined Dayton’s Wright State University that recently won a nearly $30 million Air Force contract titled Assured Digital Microelectronics Education & Training Ecosystem (ADMETE).

The contract seeks to develop a pipeline of trained undergraduate engineering students with the skills to design and develop digital microelectronic devices and systems.

The current ADMETE team consists of Wright State, the University of Akron, Youngstown State, Ohio University, the University of Toledo, and Lorain County Community College.

The program is being managed by Wright State under the direction of Vance Saunders, director of Wright State's cybersecurity program in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

"These computer chips provide the processing power for everything we're doing in technology right now," said Saunders. "Most of them are manufactured outside the United States, and we don't have the infrastructure to manufacture them all ourselves. We need to be able to assess the trustworthiness of this hardware."

The contract also expands the ongoing research and development of innovative, assured, and trusted microelectronics technologies being conducted at Wright State, Youngstown State, and the University of Akron.

According to the Department of Defense, commercial state-of-the-art manufacturers of defense-related integrated circuit development may not meet security and trusted computing requirements.

The Air Force is working to ensure that microelectronics systems from commercial manufacturers are trusted, assured and protected.

Meeting the demand requires a workforce of digital design engineers with expertise in assured and trusted microelectronic systems. The Air Force says current academic programs across the country are not meeting this need.

"No one has been putting the infrastructure in place to take the results of all this research and train the next-generation workforce in how to use it," said Saunders.

To populate the pipeline, the Air Force plans to use innovative means in outreach and recruitment and forge close partnerships between institutions of higher education and regional employers.

Saunders said the goal is to create a system in which graduating high school seniors would be able to take courses at technical schools, two- and four-year colleges, work as interns with local businesses, and have it all count toward a degree in digital electronics design and development.

The program would likely be part of an electrical engineering, computer engineering, or related degree.

Saunders said the funding will be used to hire faculty with expertise in microelectronics, develop a curriculum exciting to students, create new lab spaces, and conduct research into assured and trustworthy microelectronics solutions.

Information provided by Wright State University Newsroom