Summit brings together faculty, industry professionals to expand industry engagement at UIC
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The UIC Chemical Engineering Department recently hosted a historic summit focused on catalysis innovation.
“At UIC, we as professors all constantly strive to do better preparing students so that they can train relevantly and get a job in industry,” said Meenesh Singh, a chemical engineering professor and event organizer. “We wanted the summit to be the catalyst of an industry-academia relationship. We will implement this in our curriculum with workforce development as well as research improvements.”
The UIC Catalysis Innovation Summit was organized to connect industry leaders, researchers, and academics to foster long-term collaborations in catalysis research and provide feedback for the formal launch of the UIC Catalyst Center. The center will be a multidisciplinary industry-driven research consortium for member companies to advance catalysis research and workforce development for sustainable, impactful innovation. It also aims to establish UIC as a national leader in catalysis research and development.
As part of the event, invited industry professionals and UIC professors visited Argonne National Laboratory’s Materials Engineering Research Facility, a state-of-the-art site that enables the development and scale-up of manufacturing processes to produce advanced materials in sufficient quantity for industrial testing.
The following day all attendees met at UIC and heard from UIC’s Vice Chancellor for Research Joanna Gorden, UIC College of Engineering Dean and Professor Lola Eniola-Adefeso, Co-Director of the Crabtree Institute Jordi Cabana, Associate Dean for Research and Facilities Luke Hanley, Argonne National Lab faculty, along with various UIC Engineering and Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty.
Eniola-Adefeso shared about the translational work that UIC is doing, including technology commercialization, the number of patents and licenses belonging to university faculty, and the impact of the university’s research and work.
Industry professionals from AbbVie, Lakril, RenewCO2, Chevron, Honeywell UOP, Celadyne, BP, GTI Energy Inc, Orochem Technologies Inc, Corteva Agriscience, Nanofixation, Pajarito Powder, and Shell Technologies all attended the summit.
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The discussion focused on the hurdles of an academic-industrial collaboration, with most professionals pointing to administrative work and legal clearances being the biggest issues. They also talked about the top priorities’ education-wise with data science and machine learning approaches and skill sets that are ideal for employers. Industry professionals also gave advice and feedback about the strengths of UIC to leverage and work on for students and the community.
“Everyone’s favorite part of the summit was the discussion,” Singh said. “I enjoyed seeing how freely everyone spoke and how casual the exchanges were. I think that was really the start of the development of the Catalyst Center.”
This discussion helped to form the four pillars of the UIC Catalyst Center. The pillars consist of the development of novel chemistries and process to make sustainable chemicals and materials, prototyping to increase manufacturing ability, using data science, AI and machine learning to solve complex problems, and finally, industry advisement on sustainable and advanced manufacturing.
Closing remarks were given by Suseelan Pookote, a senior director in UIC’s Office of Technology Management.
Singh shared his gratitude for Krzysztof Z. “Kris” Pupek, who helped organize the Argonne tour and other Argonne faculty, prior to his sudden, unexpected passing before the event.
The UIC Department of Chemical Engineering organized and hosted the event.