Overview
TIE Anchors the Semiconductor Partners
TIE is UT's largest formal industry consortium, with 32 defense and commercial electronics companies and 18 academic institutions under one membership. CEO Dwayne LaBrake, formerly of Canon Nanotechnologies, leads it, and founding faculty include Professor S.V. Sreenivasan of the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering. Members include Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, NXP, Cornami, Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Micron, Canon and Resonac.
The consortium runs on $1.4 billion in combined funding ($840 million DARPA Next Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing award plus $552 million from the State of Texas) and 84,000 square feet of cleanroom at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus and the former Sematech building on Montopolis Drive. Members use the cleanrooms for prototyping, advanced packaging and 3D heterogeneous integration, and sponsor fellowships and research projects. See UT Austin TIE NGMM Center.
Partners
Major Industry Partners
| Partner | Partnership | UT Units |
|---|---|---|
| Samsung Electronics and Samsung Austin Semiconductor | Relationship since 1996; $3.7M 2023 partnership ($1M Samsung Austin Semiconductor, $2.7M Samsung national); $12M+ cumulative; TIE member; internships and hiring; annual Semiconductor Day | Cockrell; Chandra Family ECE; TIE |
| Emerson | $8.5M three-year agreement (2025); $20M+ cumulative including National Instruments, acquired 2023; funds Montopolis Research Center upgrades, Process Science and Technology Center upgrades, first three MS semiconductor cohorts, an Emerson Lab in the Engineering Discovery Building, and AI-enabled automation research | Cockrell; McKetta Chemical Engineering; TIE |
| Apple | TIE member; MS semiconductor curriculum co-designer; recruiting through Apple Austin; Semiconductor Day | Cockrell; Chandra Family ECE; TIE |
| AMD | TIE member; sponsored research and recruiting; iMAGiNE Consortium (Mike Schulte keynote); Semiconductor Day | Chandra Family ECE; Cockrell |
| NXP, Silicon Labs, Cadence | TIE members; MS semiconductor curriculum co-designers; sponsored research and recruiting | Chandra Family ECE; Cockrell; TIE |
| Microsoft | TIE member; research partner; CS and AI recruiting through Microsoft Austin; Semiconductor Day | Cockrell; CS; TIE |
| Texas Instruments | TIE member; decades of research and recruiting; Semiconductor Day | Chandra Family ECE; Cockrell; TIE |
| Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron, Canon, Intel, Micron, Resonac, Cornami | TIE members; equipment, materials and design partners; prototyping in TIE cleanrooms | Cockrell; TIE |
| Cisco | Five-year research partnership in AI and ML, cybersecurity, IoT, computer vision and edge computing; four AI/ML projects and one cybersecurity project in year one | Cockrell; CS |
| NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory | Strategic University Research Partnership (SURP) memorandum of understanding since 2012; aerospace, computational engineering, robotics | Cockrell aerospace; Oden Institute; CS |
Gifts and Curriculum
Named Departments and Co-Designed Degrees
Naming gifts are usually endowments, so they fund faculty, research, scholarships and curriculum for decades. The Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the largest in Cockrell with more than 2,500 students and 80 faculty, carries the name of alumnus Sanjay Chandra (BS ECE 1987) and his family.
Apple, Cadence, NXP and Silicon Labs co-designed the Master of Science in Engineering with a major in semiconductor science and engineering, launched Fall 2025, across manufacturing, circuits and systems, heterogeneous integration, and devices. The 30-credit, 18-month program runs on industry-funded fellowships and research assistantships, with students on sponsored projects under joint UT and industry advisors, so it doubles as a hiring channel. At the technician level, the UT, Austin Community College (ACC) and TIE Semiconductor Training Center (2024) and ACC's Semiconductor Technician Advanced Rapid Start (STARS) program (Fall 2023) build pathways with Samsung, Applied Materials, NXP and Tokyo Electron.
| Department | Named For |
|---|---|
| Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering | Alumnus Sanjay Chandra and family |
| J. Mike Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering | Alumnus J. Mike Walker and family |
| John J. McKetta Jr. Department of Chemical Engineering | Longtime UT chemical engineering chair John McKetta |
| Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering | Jeffery Hildebrand, founder of Hilcorp Energy |
| Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering | 2023 gift from alumnus Fariborz Maseeh (MS civil engineering), founder of IntelliSense, sold to Corning in 2000 |
Facilities
Industry Space on Campus
| Facility | Detail |
|---|---|
| Engineering Education and Research Center (EERC) | Opened 2017; 430,000 sq ft; home of Chandra Family ECE and industry collaboration space |
| Autry C. Stephens Engineering Discovery Building | Opening 2026; 210,000 sq ft for Hildebrand and McKetta; sponsor-funded labs including an Emerson Lab |
| Process Science and Technology Center | Pickle Campus; continuous-process research with industry-sponsored equipment |
| Microelectronics Research Center | Pickle Campus; directed by Professor Sanjay Banerjee; NSF National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI) open-access fab used outside TIE |
Talent
Recruiting Pipelines
For many Austin employers, recruiting is the main link to UT even without sponsored research. Tesla hires across mechanical, electrical and aerospace engineering, CS and AI for Cortex, Optimus and Giga Texas programs. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, Amazon and IBM run steady internship and full-time recruiting.
SpaceX, Blue Origin and Firefly Aerospace recruit from Cockrell aerospace, while Apptronik, ICON and other robotics firms draw from the Walker department and Texas Robotics.
Record
Dataset Record
- Sources
- UT Austin News; Cockrell School; Emerson; Texas Institute for Electronics; The Daily Texan
- Last verified
- Q4 2026