With 200+ faculty, the UConn College of Engineering has topnotch expertise in all aspects of engineering, from artificial intelligence (AI), to manufacturing, to biomedical technologies, and more. This combination of faculty expertise and emerging technologies can now be more easily leveraged by industry to accelerate innovation and enhance productivity.
UConn Engineering faculty now have better opportunities to make direct impact in industry in a “boots on the ground” summer fellowship experience. They will apply their academic expertise within industry environments to pilot new ideas, expand research portfolios, establish enduring partnerships, and bring industry-informed insights back to UConn research and education.
The Faculty-to-Industry Summer Fellow Program is first of its kind at the University, and a win-win-win for industry, faculty, and UConn.
The program was launched by UConn Engineering Dean JC Zhao, who leverages his experience gained from years working in industry before academia.
“This Faculty-to-Industry Summer Fellow Program underscores our college’s commitment to bridging academic discovery with real-world impact,” says Zhao. “By embedding our faculty within industry settings, we expand opportunities for transformative research, accelerate innovation, and strengthen partnerships that benefit our students, our state, and the broader engineering community.”
Prior to academia, Zhao worked in a large corporate R&D center with more than 900 Ph.D.s on site, an environment similar to a university campus or a national lab. He was sent to a manufacturing site for several months early in his career through an internal “bridge” program with which R&D scientists, like Zhao, worked with engineers and designers to solve real-world challenges.
According to Zhao, the months-long experience was life changing for him, and expanded him from an R&D scientist to a true engineer.
In addition to gaining deep understanding of the pain points of the industry as well as constraints and opportunities for innovation, Zhao says the friendships and relationships he built with engineers benefited his entire career, right up to the present.
The high-impact deployments of his innovations in actual products would have been much harder without the relationships he built from the “bridge” experience, Zhao says. He hopes UConn Engineering faculty can build lasting partnerships with industry in a similar way.
“By aligning faculty expertise with industry priorities, we strengthen our leadership in translational research, expand our collaborative footprint, and reinforce UConn as a hub where academic excellence and real-world impact intersect,” Zhao says.
According to Zhao, this program further strengthens his simple vision for UConn Engineering: global excellence and local vitalness.
Streamlined protocols have been developed for both industry and UConn faculty, including non-disclosure agreements. Selected companies will pay UConn directly through the Office for the Vice President for Research.
To begin, companies should share their needs for specific expertise and emerging technologies. Faculty will provide CVs and interest or expertise statements. Then, the UConn Engineering dean’s office will match faculty to industry.
The program is also open to government agencies and non-profit organizations with the same streamlined protocols.
More information about the program, which is a partnership with the Office for the Vice President for Research, is available online. For faculty members or industry representatives interested in matchmaking, please email the engineering dean’s office.
