INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIPS
News
04.20.07 Alltech Grant Enhances Research Partnership with UK Agriculture
03.06.07 Toyota Gives $1 Million to Establish Tech Development Institute
10.09.06 Lee T. Todd Jr. speech: "Creating a Region’s Economic Engine Through the Disciplines"
03.15.05 Governor Touts State, UK Cooperation
UK-Toyota Partnership Video
View the Quicktime movie. (To download Quicktime, click here.)
Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc.
For the past two decades, Toyota has been one of UK’s most trusted corporate partners, assisting the university in the three central tenants of our land-grant mission—education, research and service. Through research partnerships and collaboration, UK and Toyota have developed an ideal public-private partnership that has been mutually beneficial to both organizations. Thanks to strong research support from Toyota, UK Engineering Professor Kozo Saito invented the Vortecone scrubber, a device that has significantly increased the efficiency of Toyota’s painting operation. Now used in seven Toyota facilities, the Vortecone patent is jointly held by Toyota and UK.
The Vortecone discovery is just one example of UK and Toyota’s partnership. In recent years, the two organizations are partnering on a study of 3-D scanning of assembly line operations and 3-D visualization of vehicles, which could become an important part of all aspects of vehicle design. UK and Toyota are also collaborating on new welding technologies that could increase both speed and efficiency of welding operations, as well as a number of student projects on logistics and organization. Naturally, Toyota employs more than 225 UK alumni.
For more see:
“Putting the Breaks on Paint Waste”
“Designing Effective Painting Technology with Computational Fluid Dynamics”
Alltech
Alltech is an ideal Kentucky success story. Like UK, the organization shares a passion for developing and enhancing Kentucky’s knowledge-based economy. Alltech and UK’s College of Agriculture have collaborated productively for over 22 years. Alltech has provided more than $2 million in funding for UK research activities. We jointly formed the Alltech/UK Poultry Alliance at Coldstream Farm, which has accelerated scientific discovery for both Alltech and the College of Agriculture in poultry research, resulting in over 40 projects since its formation in 2004. We also recently announced a new research partnership to study animal nutrition and genomics. Called the Alltech-UK Nutrigenomics Alliance, the new partnership will only strengthen the UK-Alltech relationship.
The University of Kentucky’s commitment to providing a dynamic, comprehensive education has led Alltech to hire more than 75 UK graduates to staff Alltech’s laboratories and offices around the world. In fact, Alltech hired their Worldwide Director of Research, Dr. Karl Dawson from the College of Agriculture’s animal science department.
Belcan Aerospace Design Center
Belcan, with launch partner Sikorsky, partnered with the University of Kentucky in 2005 and opened the Belcan Aerospace Design Center in downtown Lexington that will bring 300 new jobs to Lexington. Belcan and Sikorsky chose the Lexington location because of its intellectual support and potential labor base provided by UK. Belcan is working with the College of Engineering to provide internships and hands-on, world-class engineering experience to UK students, as well as recruiting UK engineering graduates.