WEDC: Milwaukee Institute receives $750,000 WEDC grant to expand high-performance computing offerings to regional technology enterprises

CONTACT:

Kelly Lietz

608.210.6858

kelly.lietz@wedc.org

MILWAUKEE, WI. July 22, 2015 – The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) has awarded a $750,000 grant to the Milwaukee Institute to help the non-profit computational research center greatly expand its high-performance computing offerings for use by area tech enterprises.

The grant enables the Institute to expand its computational systems and services, including advanced modeling, simulation, visualization and data analytics software, and to offer new training courses on topics related to technical software engineering.

The Institute will provide hardware, software and training capacity for engineers, entrepreneurs, and researchers seeking to increase their applied technical software engineering skills, enhance creativity and innovation, become more proficient in applied data science, and to collaboratively engage in the engineering of new products, services and tools.

A key goal of these offerings is to support growth of the region’s increasingly technology-oriented industrial clusters, including the Global Water Center, Midwest Energy Research Consortium, BioForward, Food and Beverage Wisconsin, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Innovation Accelerator. Additionally, the Institute provides mentoring to incubators/accelerators, including The Commons, WARD4, BREW, GlobalECollective, VETransfer, WERCBench Labs and BizStarts.

“We are grateful for the state’s recognition of the Institute and the important roles technical computing plays in the vitality of Wisconsin’s economy, especially when viewed as a service provider to other WEDC-supported industry clusters in water, manufacturing, food and beverage, energy, healthcare and financial services,” said Dr. Jay Bayne, Institute chairman and executive director.

“Supporting key clusters such as water technology, energy, food and beverage, and bioscience is a key part of WEDC’s long-term strategy of helping businesses grow and create new jobs,” said Reed Hall, secretary and CEO of WEDC, the state’s lead economic development organization. “The enabling technologies, digital expertise and software engineering expertise of the Milwaukee Institute are considered critical to successful execution of that strategy.”

“This investment will bring even higher returns to the priority industry sectors of the state to raise their competitiveness by utilizing mega-data supercomputing to solve complex product performance problems, model market dynamics and understand the shifting market forces that will shape their business future,” added Lee Swindall, WEDC’s vice president of Business & Industry Development Division. “This unique assistance is transforming Wisconsin companies into agile 21st century competitors faster than they ever thought possible.”

This is the second grant that WEDC has provided to the Milwaukee Institute. WEDC provided $250,000 to help fund a challenge grant program that awarded $50,000 to five Wisconsin companies to speed their commercial research and development programs by providing access to high-performance computer, software, storage and training resources.

Bayne said that to support southeastern Wisconsin’s development of a 21st century technology economy, it is vital to increase the number and skills of engineers in the region, especially in the application of modeling, simulation, visualization and analytics disciplines.

“Improving the skills of engineers and ultimately the region’s technology economy requires access to modern software engineering methods and tools and underlying high performance computing systems and analytic software,” Bayne said. “With the help of this grant, the Institute will offer more systems, services and courses aimed at enabling the conception, design and implementation of sophisticated high quality products and services in a range of important industry sectors.”

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About Milwaukee Institute

Founded in 2007, the Milwaukee Institute is a non-profit computational research center dedicated to promoting and providing a regional technical computing cyber-infrastructure that encourages and enables innovation within and among academic and commercial organizations. The Institute encourages cooperation between organizations and across multiple disciplines that seek solutions to “grand challenge” problems in such diverse fields as health care, energy production and distribution, advanced manufacturing, financial services, economics and natural resource management. The Milwaukee Institute is headquartered at 411 E. Wisconsin Ave., Suite 1280, Milwaukee, WI 53202.

For more information, visit http://www.mkei.org or contact the Institute at info@mkei.org or 414.727.6424.

About the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) leads economic development efforts for the state by advancing Wisconsin’s business climate. WEDC nurtures business growth and job creation by providing resources, technical support and financial assistance to companies, partners and communities in Wisconsin. WEDC has four focus areas: business and industry development, economic and community development, entrepreneurship and innovation and international business development. Together with more than 600 regional and local business development partners, it represents a highly responsive and coordinated network. Visit http://www.inwisconsin.com or follow WEDC on Twitter @_InWisconsin to learn more.