Pillars

UPWARDS @VT — Pillars at a Glance

• Pillar 1 — Curriculum Design and Implementation
  The mission of Pillar 1 is to create and implement an effective framework for sharing industry-aligned curriculum that supports student exchange and experiential learning for all types of learners. At Virginia Tech, this is anchored by the new ECE 6204 Memory Devices & Circuits course launching in Fall 2026 (taught by Dr. Yang "Cindy" Yi across both the Blacksburg and Northern Virginia campuses), alongside four design-and-fab courses — Semiconductor Processing, Advanced Analog IC Design, VLSI Design, and the Major Design Experience (Quantum Dot Laser process development).
• Pillar 2 — Broaden Participation at All Levels of the Semiconductor Workforce
  The semiconductor industry in the U.S. and Japan faces a significant workforce shortage over the next decade. Pillar 2 addresses this by preparing students at all levels for semiconductor careers, with a deliberate effort to broaden the talent pipeline by increasing the participation of women. Virginia Tech's Year 4 contributions include bi-weekly mentorship sessions with Tokyo Electron's Anna Albert, the UPWARDS U.S.–Japan STEM Networking event hosted by the Institute of Science Tokyo (48 participants, July 2025), and the Pillar 2 Mentoring Workshop featuring industry and academic leaders from Micron Technology, TEL, and Rochester Institute of Technology.
• Pillar 3 — Experimental Learnings
  The mission of Pillar 3 is to broaden and deepen education through hands-on experience in cleanroom and lab environments — for K-12 students, educators, undergraduates, graduate students, and the broader public. Virginia Tech's experiential programs span every learner level: the UPWARDS High School Summer Camp and TechTrek program (Northern Virginia campus); Teen Science Café sessions in Alexandria and Fairfax County; the monthly UPWARDS Inspiring Seminars (267 participants in 2025–2026); the Micron Educator Hub at micron.com/EducatorHub; the annual UPWARDS Workshop in Semiconductor and IC Design (215 cumulative participants, April 2026); and ongoing undergraduate Senior Design mentorship in the cleanroom.
• Pillar 4 — Memory-Centric Research
  The mission of Pillar 4 is to foster a vibrant, cutting-edge research community focused on microelectronics, with an emphasis on memory-centric research. Virginia Tech's Year 4 output includes six peer-reviewed publications spanning in-memory computing, MRAM- and SRAM-based compute-in-memory, hyperdimensional architectures, and binary neural network accelerators. VT is also organizing the next UPWARDS Lightning Talks (June 2026, themed "Semiconductor and Circuit Design for Artificial Intelligence") and contributed nine research focus areas plus 49 specialized instruments to the consolidated UPWARDS Research Matrix and Facilities List.
• Pillar 5 — Student and Faculty Exchange
  The mission of Pillar 5 is to foster international collaboration through student, faculty, and staff exchanges across U.S. and Japanese universities — including study abroad, internships, summer camps, networking events, and joint research projects, supported in partnership with Micron and TEL. Virginia Tech hosted the UPWARDS U.S.–Japan Summer Program (22 participants in 2025; 31 students from Japan plus 2 from Boise State in 2026), and sent students to Japanese partner institutions including Nagoya University, Hiroshima University, Kyushu University, Tohoku University, and the TEL Electron Women's Camp.
• Pillar 6 — Communications
  Virginia Tech serves as the UPWARDS network's communications anchor. VT maintains the public-facing UPWARDS@VT website (upwards.ece.vt.edu) with 10 program sections — Seminars, News, Course Development, Senior Design, Workshop, Summer Camp, Exchanges, K-12 Outreach, Social Networks, and Experimental Learnings — runs the program-branded email (upwards@vt.edu), contributes to the network site at upwardsforthefuture.org, and submits the program's required research-matrix and lab-equipment documentation to the network.