Event Details

As a national initiative, the CHIPS and Science Act has two key objectives: Development of key capabilities and catalyzing employment in the semiconductor sector.  Formulation of effective policy interventions requires a clear understanding of the workforce needs, which can be assessed through the growing discipline of Labor Market Intelligence (LMI).  In this talk, I will describe JobPulse, a prototype system to estimate labor market demand using online job postings.  Using LMI approaches, we analyze the semiconductor employment demand in Southern California, estimated at 5% of the national workforce. I will report on the stark differences with demand estimates generated through traditional methods, the composition of the employer base, the critical gap of engineers in the region, and the implications at the national scale.

August 15, 2025

Join Zoom Webinar

Host: Steve Crago
POC: Amy Kasmir

Speaker Bio

Andrea Belz is the inaugural Vice Dean of Transformative Initiatives at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering (USC Viterbi), where she is a Research Director in Computational Systems and Technologies at the Information Science Institute and a Professor of Practice in Industrial and Systems Engineering. She specializes in engineering policy and technology strategy and serves as Director of Translational Strategy of the California Defense Ready Electronics and Microdevices Superhub (California DREAMS), and Director of the Center for Research in Space Technologies (CREST). She also serves as a Senior Advisor at the Aerospace Corporation. At USC Prof. Belz founded the Management of Innovation, Entrepreneurial Research, and Venture Analysis (MINERVA) research group to explore federal interventions in deep technology startups and, more recently, the labor market in deep-tech industries, including the semiconductor and defense sectors. Previously she served as Division Director at the United States National Science Foundation, where she oversaw the agency's principal applied research activities and $350 M in annual appropriations, funding a total of 1,000 startups. Earlier she served as the inaugural Vice Dean of Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship at USC Viterbi. She spent ten years in the Mission Systems Concepts Division at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory while consulting to venture capital firms, startups, and innovative organizations such as Avery Dennison, BP, Caltech, the US National Academy of Engineering, Occidental Petroleum, and UCLA. A long-time member of the Pasadena Angels investment group, she represented them on the Board of Caltech laser spinoff Ondax for eight years, until its successful acquisition by Coherent (NASD:COHR). She holds a PhD in physics from Caltech and a BS in physics from the University of Maryland at College Park. She currently serves as President of the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management (TEMS) Society.