Industrial and International Collaborations

Collaborations with Industry

Building value collaborations between industry and the broad materials expertise of PCCM faculty is the motivating goal of PCCM's industrial outreach program. Yet the benefits of PCCM's industrial outreach program extend far beyond the creation of valuable intellectual property: industrial collaboration promotes a broader, non-technical perspective and encourages cross-disciplinary approaches to problem solving. By connecting technology with societal needs, the PCCM program attracts students from across the sciences and engineering and instills in them a fundamental understanding of technology and how it affects the world. The program's workshop and fellowship events have a measurable impact in producing new patents. Most important, the PCCM industrial outreach program helps talented young engineers and scientists enter the workforce as inventors and innovators, ready to bring ideas to impact through new technologies, products and services.

The PCCM industrial outreach program is based on three foundational principles that guide its activities and focus. The program:

• Places engineering within its full societal context, promotes collaboration across disciplines and specialties, and develops student skills in research, policy, leadership and entrepreneurship.
• Pursues a people-centric rather than idea-centric approach to working with business. Too often the focus is on ideas as the means of creating wealth. Yet it is the actions of people – entrepreneurs – that create wealth, and we seek to get the right people into the right places.
• Promotes partnerships with local and international centers of innovation, government policy makers, and other universities. Invention and innovation are contact sports, demanding the full interaction and participation of faculty and students with outside decision makers and institutions. Partnerships enable the ready transfer of information and know-how, while reducing the risk and expense of any venture.

We expect to further grow our industrial collaborations with the establishment of the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM). PRISM reflects a major commitment by Princeton University to explore the science and technology of materials, and builds from the earlier success of Princeton's Center for Photonics and OptoElectronic Materials (POEM) in forging collaborations with industry to develop a host of new products and technologies. A recent study estimates that POEM assisted more than 500 companies (including 100+ start-ups), directly contributing to hundreds of new jobs in the region, and generating more than $25 million from income and payroll taxes.

The PCCM industrial outreach program targets companies that overlap with research underway in the IRGs and seeds. Areas of particular interest include magnetic and semiconductor materials, composites and catalysts, sensors and test & measurement, as well as knowledge-based enterprises in the service and financial sectors.

PCCM makes use of the PRISM industrial affiliates program to offer a multi-tiered, flexible membership agreement with categories of general member, partner, affiliate and non-profit / government.

We welcome enquiries. For further information, please contact:

International Collaborations

International collaborations are an important component of PCCM's research and education. This activity is supported with resources provided as part of Princeton's institutional commitment to PCCM. International collaborations can be divided into two broad classes: those that arise naturally in the course of PCCM research (e.g. through sabbaticals or prior faculty interactions) and those that represent institutional initiatives or links.

PCCM's organic collaborations include institutions from countries across the world. Our recent symposium on "Self-Assembly: Guided and Otherwise", was sponsored by joint Rhodia and French CNRS Complex Fluids Laboratory. IRG1 has formed close links with the Physics Department of Ben-Gurion University in Israel.

The Oxford-Princeton Partnership, which began as a research initiative within PCCM, is a prime example of an institutional agreement. Described in a formal memorandum of understanding between Oxford and Princeton, the partnership involves research that spans engineering, the sciences and humanities and promotes fully integrative undergraduate and graduate student exchange. PCCM has directly benefited from the Oxford – Princeton partnership through seed grants that helped spur collaboration in materials issues related to quantum computing and in the efforts of Judith Waller and Tom Pickthorn, Oxford students who spent nine months working under the guidance of Professors Rick Register and Paul Chaikin in IRG2.

The NSF supported US – Africa Materials Institute is a second PCCM international collaboration with an institutional reach. The program hosts researchers (Professors) from African universities for extended stays in Princeton. PCCM provides stipend support and PRISM offices and labs for the African visitors.