High-tech research and manufacturing are thriving in Goleta, but industry experts say housing shortages make it harder for companies to recruit and keep top talent.

A recent REACH Central Coast conference examined the successes and barriers for innovative industries such as microelectronics, aerospace and defense, space, and clean energy.

The REACH region — Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties — is a research and development powerhouse, mostly thanks to UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly.

Kristen Miller, president and CEO of the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce, has been bragging about the region’s high-tech bona fides for years.

The chamber has formalized it now, with its campaign marketing the South Coast as TechTopia for its technology and manufacturing industries.

A lot of people affiliated with UCSB start companies and understandably want to stay in the area, according to Umesh Mishra, the university’s dean of engineering.

That’s what he did — he co-founded Transphorm, a semiconductor company near Goleta’s City Hall, about 17 years ago.

“UCSB doesn’t produce engineers who go seek jobs; it produces engineers that go create jobs,” Mishra said. “It’s an entrepreneurial university.”

With a constant influx of students, the university “refreshes itself, which is wonderful for innovation,” he said.  

If he could snap his fingers and do anything to help the industry, Mishra said he would get more investment and more housing.

“It’s important to tackle (housing); otherwise, the future’s a little bit tenuous,” Mishra said.

Erik Lucero, a Google Quantum lead engineer and Santa Barbara site lead, got his Ph.D. at UCSB and the whole team started there, he said.

Google’s quantum computer efforts are headquartered in Goleta, and having UCSB nearby “is a big part of why we stay here,” Lucero said.

Industry Panel

During the REACH Ideas + Action Summit earlier this month, Mishra, Lucero and others talked about what the industry needs to grow, including more investment, programs to train local talent into a high-tech workforce, and more housing so employees can live and work in the area.  

The extremely small scale of microchips and machines “no longer makes human sense,” said Ty Safreno, chief executive and technical officer of SLO-based Trust Automation.

People have so many more electronic devices now that there’s been a surge of demand for microelectronics such as semiconductors, he said.

“There are so many more computers in your home — my light bulbs have a computer in them,” he said.

UCSB is among the California universities and companies getting millions of dollars through the federal CHIPS and Science Act, which wants to boost semiconductor manufacturing and development.

Asia King, a program manager for the Economic Development Administration, said they’re investing money in technology that is critical to the economy and national security, such as semiconductors.

The Biden administration also prioritized community hubs, so groups could work together and boost the capacity of an entire region.

The CHIPS and Science Act will increase domestic manufacturing, strengthen the supply chain and add more head-of-household jobs, King said.

“We know that it’s good to bring the whole community into the work,” she said, talking about the importance of diversifying the industry’s workforce, funders and founders.

“It’s not enough anymore to have the most innovative tech if distressed communities are not benefitting from it.”

Safreno said a lot of people don’t think they can work in high tech, so it’s about “how we make them make that leap.”

Part of that challenge is increasing the public’s awareness that the industry is here, Safreno said.

“There’s someone working at Starbucks right now who doesn’t think they can assemble something on the nanometer scale. How can we make them try and see that they can?” he said.

There are a lot of low-paying jobs on the South Coast now, and training programs for tech can lift more people in the region to higher-paying jobs, Mishra said.

In January, the Chamber of Commerce and county’s Workforce Development Board started a career advancement program to connect tech and manufacturing sector employers with potential workers.

The first program brought in UCSB and Santa Barbara City College students for a semiconductor technician course.