White House cabinet members tour Purdue University campus | News

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) — White House cabinet members toured Purdue University Tuesday and sat down for a fireside chat with university President Mitch Daniels.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo talked with Purdue professors and researchers at the Birck Nanotechnology Center about what’s possible at the university amid a nationwide computer chip shortage.

“We talk today about going from lab to fab,” Raimondo said after the tour of Birck. “It’s about taking the research and development that starts at a research university and bringing it through to products that power American innovation.”

Along for Tuesday’s events: U.S. Senator Todd Young, who authored the new CHIPS and Science Act.

“To ensure that we outgrow, out-innovate and out-compete the Chinese communist party to ensure that American values prevail,” Young said.

The CHIPS Act pumps billions of dollars into microchip infrastructure and manufacturers like SkyWater Technology, which is planning a $1.8 billion facility in West Lafayette that needs 750 people to operate.

Purdue President Mitch Daniels says the university is up to the challenge.

“We found profoundly our responsibility to turn out as many high-class, new talents for this state and nation as we can, and we’ve grown quickly in order to do that here,” Daniels said.

“But it really starts much earlier than that, if we’re going to truly have a pipeline that’s going to be able to supply that talent on an ongoing basis,” Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said at a fireside chat with Daniels after the tour.  “We start very early in the State of Indiana, very intentionally, with K through 12.”

Solving the semiconductor shortage, Blinken says, will have huge implications in the U.S. and worldwide.

“Our lives are literally shaped, day-in and day-out, by technology starting with the chip,” he said. “The way we live, the way we work — all of that is shaped by technology.”

It’s unclear when construction could start on the SkyWater facility, which includes a 600-thousand square-foot building with 100-thousand square feet of clean room space.