Vice President for Education and Workforce Development, NY CREATES
Robert Geer is the Vice President for Education and Workforce Development at NY CREATES, a global semiconductor R&D and commercialization hub. He is also a Professor of Nanoscale Science & Engineering at the University at Albany, SUNY. Dr. Geer received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Minnesota in 1992 and joined the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C. before joining the faculty at the University at Albany, SUNY to carry out research on chip interconnect technology. Since 2017 he has focused his efforts on education and workforce development (EWD) for the U.S. semiconductor industry. At CREATES, Dr. Geer manages a large EWD program portfolio for the broader microelectronics industry in partnership with the U.S. National Science Foundation, DoD Microelectronics Commons, the Air Force Research Laboratory, NIST and many other organizations. These programs have trained more than 1,000 technicians, engineers and military veterans for companies including GlobalFoundries, Tokyo Electron Ltd, Wolfspeed, Screen and Raytheon (RTX), in addition to training several thousand high school, community college, and university students in semiconductor-related disciplines. Professor Geer’s EWD team founded a DoD SkillBridge training program for transitioning U.S. military personnel and, most recently, founded a registered apprenticeship program for technicians at CREATES.