New Center Transforms Inventions into Market-ready Products
The University of Utah’s Center for Engineering Innovation opens its doors Thursday, Oct. 17 with a kickoff celebration to demonstrate how it transforms inventions into ready-to-produce devices. The public event will include speed dating that enables inventors and companies with new product ideas to meet engineers for 15 minutes to explore bringing concepts to market.
“It’s about generating leads by discovering what inventors’ needs are,” says center staff member Loren Rieth, a research associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the university. “If it’s not a match, the center is good at playing switchboard to plug them into other resources here.”
The center’s kickoff event will run 2-5 p.m. at the university’s James L. Sorenson Molecular Biotechnology Building – a USTAR Innovation Center.
Leveraging Utah Science Technology and Research Initiative investments, this unique center makes advanced manufacturing technologies publicly accessible. Housed within the College of Engineering and closely aligned with Utah Nanofab – the university facility that builds micro- and nanoscale devices – center staff members collaborate with university engineering and health sciences faculty to transform ideas into production-ready prototypes. Engineers guide clients through front-end activities, including writing project proposals. Prototypes then are crafted in university facilities and undergo reliability testing.
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Visit the Center for Engineering Innovation online