UT Austin Federal Program Coordination

Overview

Federal Programs Share UT Facilities

The TIE consortium that holds the DARPA Next Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing (NGMM) award also works with federal CHIPS Act programs, supports state CHIPS-funded workforce training and partners with NASA on space electronics. TACC holds the NSF Leadership-Class Computing Facility (LCCF) designation and also runs DOE workloads, DOD-funded AI research and NASA jobs.

Agencies fund separate programs, but the work runs through the same buildings, faculty leaders and student pipeline. The table below maps each agency to its main UT channel.

DARPA and CHIPS

DARPA NGMM and CHIPS Act Workforce

DARPA awarded TIE $840 million in July 2024 to build and run a national open-access semiconductor R&D and prototyping facility for 3D heterogeneous integration and advanced packaging. The award sits on top of a $552 million State of Texas appropriation, for $1.4 billion combined. The consortium has 32 defense and commercial electronics members and 18 academic institutions, and serves industry, academia and government on dual-use work. See UT Austin TIE NGMM Center.

TIE operates 84,000 square feet of cleanroom in two UT sites: the J.J. Pickle Research Campus and the former Sematech building on Montopolis Drive. It builds on the Microelectronics and Engineering Research building on main campus, home of the NASCENT Engineering Research Center, and the Microelectronics Research Center on the Pickle Campus.

The NGMM award is itself one of the CHIPS Act technology programs run through DARPA. The Commerce Department finalized a CHIPS award of up to $4.745 billion to Samsung in December 2024 for its Central Texas fabs (see Samsung Taylor Fab), and the Texas Legislature shaped the $552 million TIE appropriation to help UT compete for federal CHIPS money.

Science Agencies

NSF, DOE and NASA Programs

NSF named the IFML one of its first seven National AI Research Institutes in 2020 and renewed it in 2025 with $20 million over five years. Director Adam Klivans, a UT computer science professor, leads partners including the University of Washington, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Caltech, the Santa Fe Institute, Wichita State, Boston College and the University of Nevada, Reno. TACC's Horizon supercomputer, launching in 2026 under the LCCF designation, will be the largest academic system in the NSF portfolio, with about 10 times Frontera's general computing performance and more than 100 times its AI performance; it is open to researchers nationally, including through the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot. NSF also funds the Pickle Campus Microelectronics Research Center through the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI). See Texas Advanced Computing Center.

DOE work runs through TACC, the Cockrell School's energy and materials research and the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering. Four Hildebrand faculty won funding in a $20 million ARPA-E program on natural subsurface hydrogen, the first federal competitive selection for geologic hydrogen research at scale, and UT partners with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on the CyclicGeoH2 program. Direct air capture, grid storage, advanced geothermal and battery materials research also draw DOE funds.

NASA work spans Cockrell aerospace, the Center for Space Research and TACC. ARL:UT's Space and Geophysics Laboratory works with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on radio interferometry between GPS antennas and large radio telescopes to improve GPS precision. The Center for Space Research studies sea level rise, ice cap melt and global water storage, and builds small satellites.

Defense

ARL:UT and T2COM

ARL:UT, founded in 1945, is one of the Navy's five University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs) and the largest non-medical research unit in the UT System. In 2017 the Navy awarded it a 10-year contract worth up to $1.1 billion, administered by Naval Sea Systems Command and the largest research contract in UT history. Its core areas are acoustics, electromagnetics and information sciences, with work in sonar, GPS, cybersecurity, AI for national security, laser altimetry and quantum computing. The UARC charter allows sole-source DOD contracts in exchange for not teaming with industry in those core areas; more than 4,000 students have worked there.

The Army channel runs through the U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM), formed in October 2025 from Army Futures Command and TRADOC. UT has hosted the Army's Robotics and Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) research hubs since 2019, in the Anna Hiss Gymnasium and Professor Todd Humphreys's Radionavigation Laboratory, with UT System Board of Regents support. The Army also signed a 10-year agreement with Austin Community College for the Army Software Factory in January 2026. See UT Austin and T2COM.

The Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law runs a Joint Studies Program with ARL:UT, and the William P. Clements, Jr. Center for National Security adds history and policy research.

Risks

Constraints

Related coverage

Related Coverage

• UT Austin TIE NGMM Center
• Texas Advanced Computing Center
• UT Austin and T2COM
• UT Austin Industry-Academic Partnerships
• UT Austin Cockrell School of Engineering
• Federal Strategic Capital to Austin