Rensselaer County program instructs students how to design microchips

Finding the latest technology and high-tech tools has become increasingly difficult due to a shortage of microchips, but a new program in Rensselaer County hopes to change that trend through training.

Name a tech product utilized today and microchips are critical to their construction.

“Our automobile, our phones, our computers, medical devices," said Lamar Hill, executive director of NYDesign. But there are not enough people who know how to make the small but important devices.

"There is literally tens of thousands of jobs open here in the U.S.,” Hill said.

The shortage of design engineers is contributing to a global shortage of chips.

“It’s really a democratization of chip design,” said Bob Pasinella, director of the Rensselaer County Industrial Development Agency and a board member at NYDesign.

Efforts to curb the shortages are underway in Rensselaer County, where NYDesign on Wednesday hosted a microchip design workshop for college students.

“We partnered with a company out in California, and they created an open-source platform that allows folks to come in without having to spend the money to acquire this platform on their own, and design chips,” Pasinella explained.

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