About SSA

The story of the Semiconductor Student Alliance, or SSA, began over the Summer of 2023 when our founders, Jake Cheng and Buffett Lee, were working as interns at Micron. The company invited Professor Tsu-Jae King Liu, the Dean of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering at the time, now President of the National Academy of Engineering, to give a presentation about the semiconductor industry. There, they learned about the incoming talent shortage, and an idea was born. At first, they set out to build connections between students and the semiconductor industry, but had much greater ambitions. Eventually, they wanted to establish a vast nationwide network of SSA chapters in every major university.

ISSA’s mission is to bridge the gap between industry and students and raise awareness among a wider, more diverse group.

ISSA Mission Statement

When ISSA was being formulated, it was decided that there would be two main objectives for the organization. The first was to bridge the gap between industry and students, but the second was to raise awareness among a wider, more diverse group about the opportunities that the semiconductor industry offered. During Jake and Buffett’s internship at Micron, they saw the broad interdisciplinarity of the industry. Interns came from fields like Electrical Engineering, Materials Science, Chemistry, Physics, but also from Nuclear Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and beyond. Yet, on campus, most of the students interested in semiconductors were from Electrical and Computer Engineering or Materials Science, while other majors remain largely unaware of the opportunities available.

In the Fall of 2023, the first SSA chapter was founded at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We started small, but quickly grew, organizing student events and building partnerships with companies. Professor Shaloo Rakheja, our RSO Advisor, Director of ASAP on campus, was one of the first professors we reached out to, as she led ECE 298: The Semiconductor Chips Revolution, a seminar class. She helped us reach out to the industry and provided valuable insight and input to the founding of ISSA. By the end of 2024, ISSA had successfully hosted events with several of the largest semiconductor companies, such as Intel, Texas Instruments, and TSMC.

To take the next step in expanding SSA across the nation, we met with the Dean of Engineering, Rashid Bashir. We explained our vision of a national network, and he got us in contact with the Deans of other universities. These connections allowed us to cooperate with students from Purdue University and the University of Michigan, and soon the Purdue SSA and Michigan SSA were founded.

SSA is still growing today, with new chapters being founded in universities across the country. If you are interested in establishing an SSA chapter for your university, please use the provided guidebook as an outline and direct all questions to the ISSA email.