About Us

Making semiconductor design and fabrication accessible to students

NUSi exists because the semiconductor learning curve is steep, fragmented, and tool-heavy. We aim to turn that curve into shared projects, readable docs, and mentorship loops.

Mission

Build a student-led home for open silicon at Northwestern

We connect ASIC design, cleanroom learning, semiconductor education, and industry exchange into one technical community.

Teams

Team 01

Design Team

The design team works on the digital chip flow: writing hardware, checking behavior, emulating designs, and learning how RTL becomes physical layout.

Digital Design

RTL, architecture notes, reusable blocks, and small student-led design projects.

Verification & Emulation

Testbenches, simulation, CI, FPGA bring-up, and confidence that designs behave correctly.

Physical Design

Floorplanning, synthesis, placement, routing, timing closure, and layout reports.

Team 02

Fabrication Team

The fabrication team works together to build fabrication equipment, develop in-house processes, and build toward designing and characterizing transistors and other technologies.

  • Build and document fabrication equipment
  • Develop repeatable in-house processes
  • Connect device physics to real process data
  • Work toward transistor design, fabrication, and characterization

Advisors and leadership

Faculty advisors, student leads, project maintainers, and workshop organizers keep the group technically grounded.