Fabs are only part of this, and not universal in EE research at all. However, almost all serious EE research requires at least $100k of lab equipment of one kind or another.
Fabs are only part of this, and not universal in EE research at all. However, almost all serious EE research requires at least $100k of lab equipment of one kind or another.
That's definitely an unfortunate part of EE, the hardware required to design hardware is expensive. CS requires a laptop and maybe some time on a server or a big GPU cluster, expensive to own but very cheap to rent.
I think the explosion in availability of inexpensive microcontrollers and FPGA dev boards have made it much easier for people to get into hardware design without spending a ton of money. This has also made it cheaper to buy high end test equipment, you don't need to buy a $3k Keysight oscope when a cheap Chinese USB oscope works just as well with plenty of features built-in for free. Obviously a proper academic or corporate research lab is going to be a lot different than a well-equiped hobbyist lab but the difference is not as stark as you'd imagine.