Welcome to the frontier of optics, lasers, plasma generation, and ion acceleration, where physicists are solving the hardest (and most interesting) problems in science—like stacking atoms—in order to continue making smaller and smaller chips.

The intricacies of semiconductors require the highest levels of mathematical precision. But it’s more than number crunching. A background in math opens the world of chip modeling and algorithm development—both fundamentals in semiconductor design and performance.

Making today’s chips means using nearly half the periodic table to develop, assemble, and integrate the building blocks of our digital world. Chemical engineers, chemists, and material scientists use the most exotic elements on Earth to form billions of transistors on each chip.

Today’s engineers work at the edge of the impossible. Mechanical, electrical, systems, and manufacturing engineers are designing machines capable of producing trillions of transistors per second, in the cleanest facilities imaginable.

Controls, sensor data, machine learning, and intense modeling all need to work together flawlessly to measure and manufacture the hardware that forms the foundation of the entire internet and our digital universe. It’s as real and satisfying as it gets.