The Manufacturing Training and Technology Center, under the UNM School of Engineering, is getting $1.1 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration to help build phase three of a semiconductor and micro systems processing clean room. That money will be matched with $733,000 from university and state sources. Part of the university match comes from the 2005 bond issue and a portion comes from the university administration.
Center Director John Wood said the money comes just in time with phase two completing in late October and phase three set to start in November. He said, “Although the funding is for construction, it is really for enhanced opportunities for people as they seek workforce development, technology development and economic development.”
This funding will give the center improved infrastructure, enlarged working space and new tools to make it more functional and useful to university students and researchers, and to private companies that lease time on the equipment in the facility. Advent Solar and Agile Optics are two of the companies that utilize the facility to do prototype manufacturing of their devices.
Currently about 50 engineering undergraduate and graduate students from UNM and fifty undergraduate technicians from Central New Mexico Community College use the facility as part of their course of study. Wood says the funding will allow space for more students in each group.
He’s also excited because the money will allow faculty researchers technical capabilities that they currently do not have in New Mexico. In particular, phase three will allow MTTC to expand into the field of micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) and bio-MEMS). Biomems is the area of building small devices that can be used for detecting and manipulating biomolecules, or for medical diagnostics when implanted into the human body.
Wood says he hopes phase three construction can be completed by fall 2007.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu