Dow endows research with a new investment

CHAMPAIGN, USA: As part of its mission to solve challenging problems through innovation, The Dow Chemical Company announced a partnership with the University of Illinois to open the Dow Innovation Center, a research facility located at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The new Innovation Center, as claimed, will develop data management solutions to drive value and accelerate discovery in the Research & Development (R&D) organizations throughout Dow.

"The opening of the Dow Innovation Center continues the strong relationship between the University of Illinois and Dow," said Chancellor Phyllis Wise. "We are pushing the edges of science and technology to explore new ideas in critical areas such as water, energy, coatings and agriculture. Solutions to increasingly complex societal challenges brought about by an expanding global population will be found in this kind of innovative partnership. The new center will draw upon the strengths in High Performance Computing (HPC), Informatics, and Computer Science at the University of Illinois to enhance technology and research within Dow."

At the same time, Dow has entered into an industry partnership with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), providing access to expertise and equipment which will accelerate Dow's discovery processes.

This partnership, it says, will enable Dow to leverage the center's expertise and knowledge of best practices in high-performance modeling and simulation to gain a competitive edge. "We are very pleased to announce the opening of an IT development office that will build upon the University of Illinois' tradition of groundbreaking computer science research and education," said Roy Ladd, Director of Global Information Research at Dow. "With access to a highly passionate student body and NCSA's valuable resources, we are confident that we can develop innovative IT solutions that will help solve some of the most pressing challenges facing our customers and society today."