Applied Materials, Inc. today announced that the University of California, Berkeley will join the company’s EPIC Center in Silicon Valley as a research collaborator. Working side by side with Applied’s scientists and engineers, UC Berkeley faculty and students will pursue high-impact research programs to accelerate the material and process innovations that are foundational to AI computing.
“The EPIC Center is designed to bring together the best minds from industry and academia in a high-velocity, manufacturing relevant environment to dramatically accelerate the development and commercialization of next-generation semiconductor technologies,” said Dr. Prabu Raja, President of the Semiconductor Products Group at Applied Materials. “Few institutions have shaped modern chipmaking as profoundly as UC Berkeley. Expanding our research collaboration at the EPIC Center strengthens the lab-to-fab innovation pipeline and gives us a powerful platform for developing the semiconductor talent the industry will depend on for decades to come.”
Research universities generate many of the ideas that become tomorrow’s semiconductor materials and process technologies, yet those ideas advance fastest when researchers can test them on the same equipment used by global manufacturers. Applied’s EPIC Center gives university researchers access to industry-scale tools, enabling rapid iteration, earlier validation and a smoother handoff from discovery to deployment.
UC Berkeley brings a history of translating foundational research into commercial semiconductor technology. UC Berkeley engineers built the first research laboratory at a university dedicated to prototyping integrated circuits in 1962. In the decades that followed, the institution produced breakthroughs the entire industry now runs on – among them the SPICE circuit simulator and the FinFET, the three-dimensional transistor that is now the basis of leading-edge logic manufacturing worldwide. That heritage of moving inventions out of the lab and into high-volume production is precisely what the EPIC Center is built to accelerate.
“Pioneering innovations by UC Berkeley researchers have enabled advancements in semiconductor chip technology, resulting in the exponential growth of computing that has ushered in the AI era,” said Mark Asta, dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering. “Applied Materials’ new EPIC Center in the heart of Silicon Valley aims to speed the translation of university inventions into commercial products by providing early access to cutting-edge, industrial-scale semiconductor process equipment and technologies. I look forward to advancing research and supporting new engineering talent through this R&D collaboration with Applied Materials.”
Applied and UC Berkeley already share strong ties through semiconductor research collaborations and shared laboratory space, including work connected to the Berkeley Emerging Technologies Research (BETR) Center and the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). A large network of UC Berkeley alumni works at Applied as engineers, scientists and managers, and Applied recruits from the campus each year. Both organizations are rooted in the same Silicon Valley ecosystem, allowing ideas, people and equipment to move easily between campus and industry.
Applied’s new EPIC (Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization) Center in Silicon Valley represents the largest ever U.S. investment in advanced semiconductor equipment R&D. The center is designed from the ground up to dramatically reduce the time it takes to commercialize breakthrough technologies from early-stage research to full-scale manufacturing. The facility is on track to become operational in 2026.
