The Opportunity
Portland needs bold ideas — ones that create thousands of jobs, attract global talent, build lasting economic strength, and give the region something to believe in again. A MARS STEM University is one worth exploring.
A Rare Kind of Place
A university of this ambition must have the right location — a metropolitan area with technology infrastructure, transportation, industry proximity, and livability for world-class faculty.
The Portland Metro meets the test. Beaverton sits at the center of Oregon’s Silicon Forest. Modern infrastructure, decades of major technology operations.
Why Oregon, Specifically
Oregon’s technology heritage is rooted in hardware — and that matters more than it might first appear.
- Tektronix — founded Beaverton 1946 — pioneered the oscilloscope, built Oregon’s Silicon Forest.
- Intel — Hillsboro since 1974 — one of the most important semiconductor manufacturing locations in the world.
- Portland Metro: depth in precision engineering, advanced manufacturing, instrumentation.
AI, robotics, and space are increasingly hardware problems. Building sensors for autonomous systems. Designing chips for ML. Navigating spacecraft. Building humanoid robots. Harvesting asteroids. This is the deep hardware culture Oregon has built for 80 years.
Quantum computing is a hardware problem at its core — cryogenics, precision fabrication, advanced sensing. Oregon’s base is a natural foundation.
No other proposed institution could make this claim as credibly.
A Very Special Campus
A Very Special Campus
Within Beaverton, one property stands out: the Tektronix campus, currently part of Ralliant Corporation.
On this land, the future of Oregon’s Silicon Forest was pioneered starting in 1946. The future can start here again.
Ralliant — spun out of Fortive in 2024 — is the steward of this historic ~250 acre campus in the heart of Beaverton.
We are not suggesting the campus is available or that Ralliant has any obligation. But Ralliant and Tektronix are the right place to start a conversation — because a campus of this scale in this location is genuinely rare.
The proposed MARS University would need just 20–30 acres — a fraction of the Tektronix campus today. Cornell Tech built 880,000 sq ft across 5 buildings on just 12.5 acres in NYC.
Other Possibilities Exist
Beaverton is the natural starting point but not the only one. Intel’s Hillsboro presence is another potential candidate. The goal: find the right partner and the right site.
The Precedent: Cornell Tech
In 2011, NYC challenged institutions to propose an applied sciences campus. Cornell won. The result was built on 12.5 acres of Roosevelt Island.
The result: 1,200+ leaders graduated, 100+ startups launched, and NYC became the 2nd most valuable startup ecosystem. Construction alone produced nearly $1.5B in economic output.
Cornell Tech
- Proposed
- 2011
- Opened
- 2017
- Acreage
- 12.5 acres
- Location
- Roosevelt Island, NYC
If New York City can do it, the Portland Metro can too.