Qnity Electronics is launching a pilot work-study program with the University of Delaware that will put engineering students directly onto real automation projects inside semiconductor manufacturing operations. The partnership, announced this week, pairs undergraduates with Qnity’s technical leaders through capstone assignments and hands-on industry experience—a move designed to close the gap between academic training and the controls-heavy, data-driven reality of modern chip production.

The Blueprint: Capstones, Cleanrooms, and a Direct Talent Pipeline

The collaboration isn’t a vague memorandum of understanding. It rests on two concrete pillars: a corporate-sponsored capstone program and a new work-study track.

University of Delaware’s College of Engineering already runs a Corporate Partnership Program in which multidisciplinary student teams tackle practical problems for companies. Qnity will use that structure to embed students in projects tied to its own manufacturing and operational challenges. At the same time, the company is piloting a work-study component that gives participants industry experience while they contribute to Qnity’s automation initiatives.

“The goal is not merely campus recruiting,” Qnity CTO Randy King told Manufacturing Dive. “By investing in hands-on learning, automation, and workforce development, we’re helping build the talent and innovation ecosystem that will power the next generation of technological breakthroughs.”

That emphasis on automation is the headline detail for engineering and IT teams. Students won’t just observe; they’ll be working on operational technology, materials processes, and the data systems that increasingly govern advanced manufacturing.

What the Partnership Actually Delivers

Beyond the talent pipeline, Qnity gains access to university facilities that are difficult to replicate on a factory floor. The agreement includes collaboration with UD faculty on semiconductor-materials research and use of the Keck Center for Advanced Microscopy and Microanalysis, a lab equipped for investigating material composition, defects, and performance at the micro and nano scales.

Those tools matter. In an industry where yield depends on controlling processes at atomic layers, the ability to analyze failures with university-grade instrumentation can accelerate troubleshooting that might otherwise stall production.

For the university, the partnership offers a direct connection to a growing local employer. Qnity opened a 385,000-square-foot facility in Newark, Delaware, in March to expand production of chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) materials—consumables critical for AI, high-performance computing, and advanced connectivity chips. The company, spun out of DuPont’s electronics business last year, has been rapidly building its R&D footprint, also announcing collaborations with NVIDIA on accelerated computing and joining the imec research consortium in late July.

“This builds sustained relationships that span the classroom, research lab, and broader UD community,” said Jenni Buckley, associate dean for corporate engagement and entrepreneurship at UD Engineering.

What It Means for You—Depending on Your Role

For Engineering Students and Early-Career Technologists

If you’re studying electrical, mechanical, or materials engineering—or even computer science with an interest in industrial systems—programs like this are a career accelerant. The semiconductor industry is notoriously hard to break into without cleanroom experience or knowledge of specific manufacturing execution systems. A work-study that puts you on actual automation projects provides that ticket.

Qnity’s model suggests that companies are willing to invest in training earlier if it means they can shape graduates who already understand their toolchains and quality standards. For students, the takeaway is clear: prioritize co-ops, capstones, and internships that embed you in real production environments, not just lab simulations.

For IT and Automation Professionals

The semiconductor sector’s hunger for automation talent is no secret. But this partnership signals that the skills employers want are shifting from pure hardware to a blend of process engineering, data analytics, and operational technology management. If you work in IT infrastructure, manufacturing systems, or industrial controls, consider how your knowledge of networking, databases, and scripting can transfer to environments where milliseconds of latency affect physical output.

Qnity’s collaboration with NVIDIA, for example, points to a future where accelerated computing and digital twins are part of everyday fab operations. Familiarity with those tools—or at least the concepts—could become a differentiator.

For Business Leaders and Manufacturers

The Qnity-UD agreement isn’t a one-off charity project; it’s a workforce strategy. With the global semiconductor market projected to surpass $1 trillion by the end of the decade, talent is the industry’s biggest bottleneck. The U.S. CHIPS Act has poured billions into domestic fabrication, but the skilled workers to run those fabs are in critically short supply.

A work-study pipeline that starts during undergraduate years can shorten the onboarding curve from months to weeks. If you’re a manufacturer outside the semiconductor space, the framework is replicable: identify a local university with relevant technical programs, sponsor capstones that solve genuine problems, and create early-exposure roles that convert students into loyal hires.

For Consumers and Tech Buyers

Although the partnership doesn’t directly affect your next laptop purchase, it influences the larger supply chain. CMP materials are essential for producing the advanced logic and memory chips inside every PC, smartphone, and data center server. A stronger U.S. manufacturing base for consumables and a steady stream of qualified engineers lower the risk of supply disruptions and could, over time, help stabilize costs.

More tangentially, as automation becomes more prevalent in chipmaking, the same technologies often trickle into other industries—smart factories, logistics, even building management. The tools students learn on Qnity’s floor today may end up controlling the warehouse or power grid you interact with tomorrow.

How We Got Here: From Spin-Off to Ecosystem Bet

Qnity Electronics was born in 2025 when DuPont carved out its electronics business. The company inherited a portfolio of specialty materials used across semiconductor fabrication, but it needed to quickly establish its own identity, R&D network, and workforce—especially as competitors ramped up domestic production.

The Newark facility expansion, announced earlier this year, was the physical manifestation of that ambition. The 385,000-square-foot plant targets the CMP slurry market, which is projected to grow as chip architectures become more complex. CMP steps can number in the dozens for leading-edge nodes, making the materials a recurring, high-margin business.

But scaling a factory requires more than square footage. Semiconductor manufacturing is a team sport involving process engineers, materials scientists, data analysts, and equipment technicians who can program, troubleshoot, and optimize automated systems. Traditional university curricula often silo these disciplines, leaving graduates unprepared for the cross-functional reality.

The University of Delaware partnership is Qnity’s answer to that. It leverages an existing capstone infrastructure that the College of Engineering has honed for years, plugging the company into a ready-made pipeline of multidisciplinary teams. Meanwhile, the timing aligns with a broader push: the CHIPS Act’s workforce development provisions encourage exactly this kind of industry-academic collaboration.

Qnity’s other recent moves—the NVIDIA collaboration on accelerated computing for materials research and the imec membership—round out the strategic picture. The company isn’t just hiring; it’s building an innovation network that spans a global research institute, a top-tier graphics hardware firm, and a local university. In that light, the work-study program is the human capital thread tying it all together.

What to Do Now

If you’re a student:
Research universities with strong engineering co-op or capstone programs. University of Delaware isn’t the only school embedding students with semiconductor companies; Purdue, Arizona State, and the University of Texas at Austin have similar initiatives. Reach out to corporate engagement offices early, and tailor your coursework toward automation, data analysis, and materials characterization.

If you’re an IT professional:
Start bridging the gap between traditional IT and operational technology. Learn about SCADA systems, PLC programming, and industrial communication protocols like OPC UA. Even if you never set foot in a fab, these skills are increasingly valuable in manufacturing-adjacent roles where Windows and Linux servers control production lines.

If you’re an employer:
Assess whether your current internship program is designed to train or merely to screen. Qnity’s model suggests that giving students meaningful project ownership—rather than administrative tasks—builds the kind of loyalty and practical skill that pays off after graduation. Partner with local community colleges too; many have two-year programs in semiconductor manufacturing technology that can fill technician roles faster than four-year degrees.

For everyone else:
Keep an eye on Delaware’s semiconductor ecosystem. What happens at Qnity’s Newark plant over the next two to three years—whether the capstones lead to hires, whether the work-study graduates stay in the industry—will serve as a real-world test case for CHIPS Act workforce development. If it works, expect many more companies to adopt the same playbook.

Outlook: From Pilot to Permanent Pipeline

The immediate measure of success will be straightforward: how many of the first cohort of work-study students accept full-time offers from Qnity? A high conversion rate would validate the pilot and likely lead to expansion into other technical roles, such as equipment maintenance and quality control.

Longer term, the partnership could evolve into a deeper research hub. With access to the Keck Center and faculty expertise, Qnity might co-develop next-generation CMP formulations or in-line monitoring techniques. If those innovations reach production, the university will have demonstrated that a regional school can compete with the national labs and research consortia that typically dominate semiconductor R&D.

For the broader Windows and IT community, the story is a reminder that the devices and cloud services we rely on are built on a foundation of physical manufacturing that is rapidly automating. The engineers coming out of programs like Qnity’s will be the ones programming the robots, analyzing the sensor streams, and ensuring that the chips in our machines keep getting smaller, faster, and more reliable.