Leaders from Wichita State and the city's private sector attended the Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP) Summit in Washington DC last week. The summit is geared toward best practices in manufacturing. Last year's summit helped generate a $7 million grant recently awarded to WSU.
WSU Venture's Debra Franklin says the group met with federal experts to learn more about new manufacturing processes to become more globally competitive.
"They're using high-performance computing, which is one of the things that many of our manufacturers are adding to their competencies and so was interesting to see what they were doing that might be able to be applied in our area," she says.
Franklin recently helped Wichita State obtain a 7 million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce, that will assist in funding multiple initiatives including the Community Makerspace.
"It will be a space where students or community members people who want to take their ideas and create prototypes, a location where they can go and work with like minded people with specialty equipment to bring their ideas to life," Franklin says.
The Makerspace will be located inside the experiential engineering building on the former Braeburn golf course. She says it will be open within the next 18 months.
The Experiential Engineering Building groundbreaking dedication is scheduled for Friday, October 30 at 10am.
