United Technologies is to donate $10 million to UConn to found a new engineering initiative. The UTC Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering, as the new partnership will be known, is expected to be accepting students by next spring.
The funding behind the partnership is significant. UTC's gift is the largest corporate donation UConn has received in ten years.
The institute will be dedicated to research on systems engineering, which is the science of integrating different complex technologies that must work together in everything, from smartphones, to office buildings, to aircraft. Systems engineers focus on making whole products work together with an emphasis on reliability, efficiency, and cost reductions.
UTC said it hopes its own workforce will benefit from the education and research that will be fostered by the institute, and some of its own products will be the subject of research projects.
UConn is expected to hire a director and six other faculty to staff in the institute.
