Dear future partners,
Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago can be thought of as Materials Science & Engineering from a design-thinking approach. Why do we seem to ‘limit’ ourselves to materials? As you probably know, new and better materials are a game changer.
Companies will benefit enormously by leveraging complementary resources here. These resources include:
- Undergraduate molecular engineering student capstone projects
- Internships and externships for graduate and undergraduate students at your company
- Student and faculty consultants for companies
- Advanced analytical instrumentation available for industry to use
- Forming industry-university partnerships with creative and top-ranked faculty on federally funded projects
- Partnerships with two national laboratories and access to their resources
- Expanding your networking circles to leverage connections and talent
- Getting a jump on the competition by better understanding how emerging horizon 2-3 technologies can help your company improve resilience and self-disruption
- Executive education with certificate and Master's degree programs
- Being plugged in to one of the premier universities and business schools in the world
- Having dedicated people at the university help you find the right resources
Part of being a successful engineering school involves translating our discoveries into commercial space with the help of our industrial partners. Before that partnership can be nurtured and developed, there has to be a two-way value proposition for your company and the university.
Being aware of tangible opportunities and knowing the tactics of how to leverage them lowers the barriers to access. Our Director of Corporate Engagement, Felix Lu, is here to help you learn about these opportunities and connect you with the right technical expertise. That could be with computational modelers, quantum-system engineers, immunoengineers, or experts in the design and characterization of sustainable materials.
Felix Lu
Director of Corporate Engagement
At the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME), we encourage companies to engage and create new value with:
- Premier talent
- Interdisciplinary solutions from cutting edge research
- World-class materials characterization and processing facilities
Pritzker Molecular Engineering is a collaborative environment that’s geared toward enhancing corporate innovation efforts, where students are given the key to incorporate scientific advances and molecular building blocks into tomorrow’s advanced products, materials, and processes.
Our partners and collaborators include the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Argonne National Laboratory, the Institute for Translational Medicine, and many more both internal and external to the University of Chicago. These groups offer breadth, the ability to scale, and talent to create and act on road maps to product or service deployment.
We encourage you to learn more about how we can help your company innovate and see if our resources are a good fit for your priorities. The easiest way to do that is to set up a conversation with us. Our director of corporate engagement will provide an introduction to the PME and explain the pros and cons of different modes of engagement from the “just curious-just looking” to “I’m interested! Tell me more.”
Engaging with us grants you targeted deep access to subject-matter experts from both PME and the Division of Physical Sciences. You’ll also have access to a variety of networking events, gateways to advanced instrumentation and senior design projects, graduate student internships, and an easy point of contact to help you navigate university resources.
Use our facilities
We offer corporate partners access to our advanced instrumentation facilities, including the Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility, the Soft Matter Characterization Facility, and ChemMATCars. Together, these laboratories enable researchers to study nanoscale fabrication, soft materials, crystallography, and more.
Industry can benefit from these powerful resources to gain insight into material processes, modes and mechanisms of failure, design of tailored new materials, and material analysis – which can provide a strong, competitive edge for your business. Learn about these facilities below and ask us for guidance on how to leverage them for your company
Hire our students
As a corporate partner, you gain targeted access to a very talented pool of students from across disciplines. We have many options available for you to work with and recruit our students, including networking at annual events, undergraduate and graduate student internships, leveraging senior design projects, hiring a part-time graduate student consultant, and ways to sponsor post-docs with the PME. We are open to other ideas and exchanges – just ask.
Find out more about recruiting undergraduate students or graduate students.
Corporate Affiliates Program
The Chicago Immunoengineering Innovation Center
In addition to publications that advance the field, our researchers are dedicated to maximizing the impact of their work in the real world. Our researchers value entrepreneurship and industrial partnerships as avenues to accomplish that impact. In addition, as an offshoot of the UChicago PME, the CIIC participates in its corporate affiliate program, which connects our partners to STEM trainees versed in product design and entrepreneurship, and in-depth previews of our latest scientific discoveries and transformative technological developments.
The Chicago Quantum Exchange
The Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE) is an intellectual hub and community of researchers with the common goal of advancing academic and industrial efforts in the science and engineering of quantum information across CQE members, partners, and our region. The hub aims to promote the exploration of quantum information technologies and the development of new applications. The CQE facilitates interactions between research groups of its member and partner institutions and provides an avenue for developing and fostering collaborations, joint projects, and information exchange.
Members of CQE are focused on developing new ways of understanding and exploiting the laws of quantum mechanics, the fundamental yet counterintuitive theory that governs nature at its smallest scales. The overarching aim is to apply research innovations to develop radically new types of devices, materials, and computing techniques.
The mission of the CQE is to accelerate discovery and innovation in the rapidly developing areas of quantum technology, and to attract talent, funding, and industry to the Chicago area to become the source for tomorrow’s leading quantum engineers.
Connect to the industry-oriented Pritzker Molecular Engineering Group on LinkedIn.