Leading semiconductor industry executive at GlobalFoundries to join President Chiang for Jan. 15 Presidential Lecture Series event

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The president and CEO of GlobalFoundries, a leading semiconductor manufacturer, will join Purdue University President Mung Chiang for a fireside chat next week, kicking off the spring 2025 edition of the Presidential Lecture Series.

Dr. Thomas Caulfield, who has led GlobalFoundries since 2018, steered the company’s initial public offering in October 2021, which was the largest semiconductor IPO on Nasdaq that year. He has an extensive career spanning engineering, executive management and global operational leadership with leading technology companies.

Caulfield’s Presidential Lecture appearance, titled “Semiconductors: The Core of the World Economy,” is at 6 p.m. Wednesday (Jan. 15) in Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall. The event is free and open to the public, but a general admission ticket will be required.

Caulfield and Chiang are expected to explore the dynamic landscape of the semiconductor industry, with a focus on recent technological developments, particularly how GlobalFoundries is addressing opportunities in the emerging AI space. Caulfield also will discuss the impact of the CHIPS and Science Act, along with GlobalFoundries’ strategic initiatives to strengthen U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and ensure a secure, resilient supply chain.

“Dr. Caulfield’s leadership has propelled GlobalFoundries as a major worldwide player in the semiconductor industry, and his visit to Purdue represents the continuation of Purdue’s leadership in this industrial and technological sector so critical to America’s national and economic security,” Chiang said.

GlobalFoundries, headquartered in Malta, New York, is a leading manufacturer of essential semiconductors that power the technologies the world relies on to live, work and connect.

Caulfield arrived at GlobalFoundries in May 2014 as senior vice president and general manager of the company’s Fab 8 semiconductor wafer manufacturing facility in Malta, New York. In this role, he led operations, process development, and the expansion and ramp-up of semiconductor manufacturing production.

Prior to joining GlobalFoundries, Caulfield served as president and chief operations officer from 2012-14 at Soraa, the world’s leading developer of GaN on GaN (gallium nitride on gallium nitride) solid-state lighting technology.

He also served as president and COO of Ausra, a leading provider of large-scale concentrated solar power solutions for electrical power generation and industrial steam production from 2009-10. Before taking the helm at Ausra, Caulfield was executive vice president of sales, marketing and customer service at Novellus Systems Inc.

Earlier in his career, Caulfield spent 17 years at IBM in a variety of senior leadership roles, culminating in his position as vice president of 300-millimeter semiconductor operations for the company’s microelectronics division, leading its wafer fabrication and R&D operations in East Fishkill, New York.

He currently is a member of the boards of directors for Western Digital Corp. and the Semiconductor Industry Association.

Caulfield holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from St. Lawrence University in New York. He went on to earn his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in materials science and engineering from Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, where he also was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia’s Engineering Center for Strategic Materials.

Under Caulfield’s leadership, GlobalFoundries has joined industry, government and academic leaders including Chiang in their strong support for the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, a measure approved by Congress to help secure the nation’s security and economic future.

The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act is a $280 billion funding plan designed to trigger innovation and research to support U.S. defense and semiconductor manufacturing industry needs. The measure, which stands for Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors, authorized nearly $53 billion specifically for chipmakers.

Purdue’s growing semiconductor innovation ecosystem is one of four key pillars of Purdue Computes, a comprehensive initiative that includes becoming a leader in the field of physical artificial intelligence, and advancing quantum science and engineering to create future technologies that enable unparalleled excellence at scale.

In a major collaborative success with Purdue, South Korea-based memory chipmaker SK hynix Inc. on Dec. 19 was granted $458 million in direct funding through the federal CHIPS and Science Act to bolster its plans for constructing a nearly $4 billion advanced packaging fabrication and R&D facility for AI products in the Purdue Research Park. The facility, expected to go online in the second half of 2028, will mass-produce high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, chips, the key component of graphic processing units that train AI systems such as ChatGPT.

About the Presidential Lecture Series

Launched in 2014 by then-Purdue President Mitch Daniels and continued by President Mung Chiang, the Presidential Lecture Series exposes Purdue students and the broader community to inspiring ideas, courageous leadership, and models of civic engagement and civil discourse. The Presidential Lecture Series has had over 40 guests of many viewpoints and perspectives and hosted some of the great intellectual, business and civic leaders of our time. As one of the world’s premier centers of scholarly leadership, Purdue is — appropriately and necessarily — a regular venue for great thinkers across a wide variety of disciplines.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including over 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.