University of Illinois, Dow AgroSciences Celebrate Grand Opening of Innovation Facility at Research Park

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (Sept. 28, 2015) – The University of Illinois and Dow AgroSciences LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW), today announced the grand opening of a facility located in the Research Park at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This facility brings together resources from key fields for the company’s research and development (R&D) efforts, including statistics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering to catalyze innovation through analytics. 

 

Projects at the facility focus on exploration and implementation of analytics technologies applied to agricultural challenges. The facility allows students, most of them at the graduate level, to work year-round on various projects related to development of advanced computational tools and analysis of chemical and biological datasets.

 

“The Dow AgroSciences Innovation Center at the University of Illinois brings us directly into the center of one of the nation’s top computational sciences campuses,” said Daniel R. Kittle, Ph.D., vice president, Dow AgroSciences Research and Development. “The University has excellent talent that will enable us to advance our global agricultural research efforts.”

 

The Dow AgroSciences facility builds upon the momentum already established by The Dow Chemical Company Innovation Center which opened in 2013 and focuses on information technology applied to research and development. The two innovation centers are co-located and share resources. The new facility expands upon the longstanding research and development relationship between the University of Illinois and Dow AgroSciences. 

 

“The intersection of agriculture with data analysis continues to advance in intensity and complexity,” said interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson. “To work on such problems in real-world scenarios is an invaluable opportunity for our students, augmenting their education significantly and giving them an advantage as they go into the workplace. Agriculture is becoming a focal point for operations in the Research Park, and Dow AgroSciences is a key component of that peer group.” 

 

The University of Illinois Research Park is home to innovation centers for multinational corporations and publicly traded firms including The Dow Chemical Company, ADM, John Deere, Yahoo!, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Caterpillar, State Farm, Citrix, Raytheon, and Abbott.

 

 

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About the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Since its founding in 1867, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has earned a reputation as a world-class leader in research, teaching, and public engagement. Located on campus, the Research Park at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a technology hub for startup companies and corporate research and development operations. Within the Research Park there are more than 90 companies employing students and full-time technology professionals. For more information, please visit illinois.edu and researchpark.illinois.edu.  

 

About Dow AgroSciences

Dow AgroSciences discovers, develops, and brings to market crop protection and plant biotechnology solutions for the growing world. Based in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, Dow AgroSciences is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company and had annual global sales of $7.3 billion in 2014. Learn more at www.dowagro.com. Follow Dow AgroSciences on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.