The Illinois Plasma Institute (IPI) is an initiative of the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  IPI’s founding was driven by a desire to rethink existing pathways to the commercialization of new technologies developed in academic research settings.  Combining the best of both worlds, IPI provides a space where forward-thinking industrial partners can pair their own research and development staff with academic researchers closer to the underlying science behind a new technology.  Working in concert on a shared platform, advances made it the laboratory may be implemented onto production-level equipment shortening the time to adoption in high-volume manufacturing. 

Complementary to cooperation in the lab, assignees from industrial partners also find easy access to the College’s Masters of Engineering in Plasma Engineering, a professional Master’s program designed to prepare workers from a wide variety of technical fields for the unique opportunities that plasma processing has to offer.