UC Berkeley alumni also work across Applied’s engineering, scientific and management teams, while the company continues to recruit from the campus.
Applied Materials is bringing the University of California, Berkeley into its EPIC Center in Silicon Valley as a research collaborator, giving faculty and students access to industry-scale semiconductor equipment as they work on materials and process advances for AI computing. The partnership is designed to shorten the journey from university research to high-volume chip manufacturing.
At the center, UC Berkeley researchers will work alongside Applied Materials scientists and engineers on high-impact research programs focused on next-generation semiconductor technologies.
By putting academic teams on the same class of tools used by global manufacturers, the collaboration aims to enable faster testing, earlier validation and a smoother transition from lab discoveries to production-ready processes.
A history of chip breakthroughs
UC Berkeley brings a deep semiconductor research legacy to the collaboration. Its engineers established the first university research laboratory dedicated to integrated-circuit prototyping in 1962.
The university later produced foundational innovations including the SPICE circuit simulator and the FinFET, the 3D transistor architecture used across today’s leading-edge logic manufacturing.
The new program builds on an existing relationship between Applied and UC Berkeley, including shared research and laboratory work linked to the Berkeley Emerging Technologies Research (BETR) Center and the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).
UC Berkeley alumni also work across Applied’s engineering, scientific and management teams, while the company continues to recruit from the campus.
From research idea to fab
EPIC, short for Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization is Applied Materials’ Silicon Valley R&D facility built to accelerate semiconductor process and manufacturing-equipment innovation.
The company says the center represents the largest-ever U.S. investment in advanced semiconductor equipment R&D and is on track to become operational in 2026.
With cleanroom space, industry-scale equipment and closer collaboration among chipmakers, universities and ecosystem partners, Applied is positioning EPIC as a faster route to commercialising the materials and manufacturing breakthroughs needed for the next generation of AI hardware.
Leadership Comment
“Research universities generate many of the ideas that become tomorrow’s semiconductor materials and process technologies,” Applied Materials said. The EPIC Center is intended to help those ideas move faster by providing a manufacturing-relevant R&D environment, rather than leaving researchers to bridge the gap between lab-scale experiments and fab-scale deployment on their own.
“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.”
“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.”
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