By Babatunde Ojo and Micaela Itona
On Tuesday, November 10, New Jersey Innovation Institite hosted an open house for faculty and students to shed light on their mission and goals. A year after its initial launch, NJII has made great strides in the partnership between itself and NJIT.
NJIT’s unique geographic location at the center of a corporate and industrial hub poses NJII to open the door between industry and the university’s resources and assets. NJII makes communication between the university and local industry easier than ever.
“There was a time where businesses told engineers what they want, now we’re moving into a phase where engineers tell businesses what is possible,” says President and CEO of City National Bank, Preston D. Pickett III about NJII.
NJII has an organizational responsibility with NJIT’s development mission targeted at: economics, industrial research, technology and IPs, enterprise, partnerships with the government, private sector, and higher education.
NJII’s recent partnership with NJIT has already shown to be a success in multiple areas because NJII’s initiatives offer active reminders and visibility to decision makers and the public about NJIT’s role in the local economy. In just one year, NJII has helped enrich students’ education through internships, giving twenty NJIT students internships, and EDC companies employing more than three hundred NJIT students. An estimate of $290K has been allotted to faculty research buyouts and summer research work since July 2014. Faculty and students alike are involved in those projects and their development and proliferation. New Jersey’s local economy is vulnerable to disruptive technology, and significant divisions in manufacturing are migrating from the area. NJII is the beginning of unique industry-university partnerships that boost both the value of companies and NJIT to the area.
The research and development branch at the core of NJII’s mission is comprised of five Innovation Labs, or iLabs, that focus their research on: healthcare delivery systems, bio-pharmaceutical production, civil infrastructure, defense and Homeland Security, and financial services. The labs were created to listen and respond to industry’s needs and preferences, and more acutely they enrich faculty and student development through their participation in research and project development. NJII is a revolutionary new model in that it dips into a resource largely underestimated – university students, their community, and culture.
“The future for our companies…in terms of the innovation and technology and the workers of the future is almost solely dependent upon our relationships with academia and the universities….The New Jersey Innovation Institute is perfectly timed,” says Panasonic Corp. of North America Chairman and CEO Joe Taylor.
The current paradigm approach to the university’s role and engagement with industry is changing, and NJII is at the center of it.
