A groundbreaking collaboration between community colleges and research universities was on display at the TechConnect World Innovation Conference & Expo, where two teams from across the country presented digital twins of semiconductor fabs. The west coast team, led by Kristal Hong (first from right) from UCI, presented the digital twin of the UCI fab and the east coast team, led by Abubaker Ahmadi (second from left) from Mercer County Community College, presented a digital twin of the Princeton University’s Semiconductor Packaging Lab.
The project features a fully immersive VR simulation designed to guide users through the critical steps of semiconductor operations such as deposition, dicing, die bonding, wire bonding, and inspection, with the goal of training future engineers and technicians and preserving expert knowledge in advanced manufacturing.
Developed using tools such as SimInsights’ HyperSkill platform, Unity, Blender, and AI, the digital twin experiences integrate cutting-edge immersive technology with AI-powered tutors.
This bi-coastal initiative brought together academic institutions from across the country:
📍 East Coast: Princeton University & Mercer County Community College
📍 West Coast: Pasadena City College, UC Irvine, and Irvine Valley College
At TechConnect, the team delivered a poster presentation, formal talk (see above), and a hands-on VR demo, offering attendees the chance to experience the simulations firsthand and engage with the possibilities of immersive learning.
This initiative highlights the potential of digital twins, virtual reality, and AI to reshape technical education and workforce development across industries. A distinguishing aspect of this project was that student teams were able to learn the skills needed to build digital twins. Success of this project points to a pathway for scaling up a national workforce of digital twin developers and maintainers.
About HyperSkill
HyperSkill is a no-code 3D simulation platform for both Virtual and Augmented Reality. HyperSkill was created to enable instructional designers to create immersive training content without having to learn programming. HyperSkill includes thousands of 3D assets and simulations that are accessible for free to users. HyperSkill enables non-programmers to author VR/AR content, publish it to various devices and audiences and collect and visualize experience data. HyperSkill has been developed with R&D funding from the National Science Foundation. To learn more, please visit https://siminsights.com/hyperskill/
About SimInsights
SimInsights mission is to democratize the creation of 3D, interactive, immersive and intelligent (I^3) simulations. We believe that simulations are the most impactful way to learn, yet few people can actually leverage them as a creative medium. SimInsights offers HyperSkill, a no-code tool to enable everyone to capture their knowledge in the form of 3D immersive, AI-powered simulations and share it with others. The SimInsights team used HyperSkill to create Skillful, a growing collection of simulations to help anyone master any skill.