August 16, 2016 | Eli Freund - School of Engineering

Quiet Corner Innovation Cluster Announces First Partner

the QCIC announced Loos & Co., Inc. as its first partner recently.

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Robert Davis, vice president of sales and marketing at Loos & Co., Inc., Matt McCooey, chief executive officer of Connecticut Innovations, Kazem Kazerounian, dean of UConn Engineering, Hadi Bozorgmanesh co-executive director of the UConn Entrepreneurship & Innovation Consortium, Joe Courtney, congressman from Connecticut’s second district, Bill Loos, chief executive officer of Loos & Co., Inc., Kathy Rocha, managing director, UConn Entrepreneurship & Innovation Consortium, and Michael Accorsi, senior associate dean of UConn Engineering at Loos & Co., Inc.

The Quiet Corner Innovation Cluster, a partnership that is led by the University of Connecticut School of Engineering, has announced that Loos & Co, Inc. will be the program’s first participant.

The Quiet Corner Innovation Cluster (QCIC) was created to enable economic growth in rural Eastern Connecticut, otherwise known as Connecticut’s Quiet Corner. The QCIC targets small and medium sized technology and manufacturing companies to foster growth and innovation within New London, Tolland and Windham counties. With partners including UConn, the Economic Development Agency and Connecticut Innovations, the QCIC draws upon its resources to develop new products and update business opportunities for manufacturers.

“The QCIC exists to help smaller and medium sized manufacturers thrive in today’s economy. UConn has strong research and development resources that can help these companies stay relevant in the modern world.” said Hadi Bozorgmanesh, the co-executive director of the UConn Entrepreneurship & Innovation Consortium.

Loos manufacturers a wide variety of cable and wire products. Steve Suib, the director of the Institute of Materials Science, said that UConn will work with Loos to analyze and evaluate those products.

“The QCIC will allow researchers at UCONN to work with researchers from Loos to characterize many of their wire materials. State-of-the art microscopy, diffraction, and spectroscopy experiments will be done to study the chemical compositions, structural properties, and physical properties, such as strength,” Suib said.

Representatives from Loos were excited about the potential of the partnership.

“We are thrilled to be chosen as the first manufacturer to partner with QCIC,” said Robert Davis, vice president of sales and marketing at Loos & Co., Inc. “Our visit with Congressman Courtney provided us the opportunity to show him and the rest of the team how well positioned we are to grow well into the future.”

Congressman Joe Courtney, school of engineering leadership and representatives of Connecticut Innovations recently visited Loos to celebrate the start of the partnership. The QCIC will develop new partnerships with other northeastern Connecticut businesses in the coming months and years.