As a way to help foster the next generation of innovative engineers, the aging but heavily used Electronic Design Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, is getting a much-needed transformation.
On May 10, Texas Instruments announced a gift of $2.2 million to UC Berkeley that will modernize this lab and also connect it to the engineering student lounge and Hacker/Maker space. Doing so will cultivate community, collaboration and creativity among the students.
“With TI’s expanded Silicon Valley research and development base in Santa Clara, this gift represents another step in our commitment to fostering the innovation ecosystem in this region and around the world,” said Gregg Lowe, senior vice president of TI’s Analog business. “The gift also dovetails with TI’s initiatives to increase internship opportunities for engineering students. By engaging students early in their engineering education, we can help ignite lifelong ingenuity and passion for tackling the world’s challenges with analog and embedded processors.”
In addition to the monetary gift, TI is donating development kits that incorporate a range of devices from its extensive semiconductor portfolio, and supporting software, to enhance the hands-on learning experience in the classroom.
“This is a unique opportunity to introduce a new generation of engineering students to the fun of building things that matter,” said Professor Costas Spanos, chair of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department at UC Berkeley. “We will do this by infusing the ‘maker’ ethic early into the learning cycle, and by creating a place that brings together state-of-the-art instructional labs, a student meeting place and student-run space for hardware hacking.”
The gift is a result of bringing together long-standing relationships the university has held with TI and with National Semiconductor, one of the original Silicon Valley semiconductor companies, which joined TI in September last year.