Revolutionary research into the fundamentals of electrical power and other promising areas of engineering will be emerging from the University of Illinois College of Engineering laboratories, thanks to three new major gifts from The Grainger Foundation Inc. of Lake Forest, Illinois.

One gift will establish and provide funding for the Grainger Program in Emerging Technologies.  The program is designed to increase awareness among faculty and students of how new developments in engineering science and technology can create commercially viable products and services.

The Grainger Program is unusual in that it will close the gap between federal funding, which often focuses on new ideas without requiring that their practical utility be demonstrated, and industrial support, which typically targets only proven technologies.  The two-year program will fund up to 14 grants of $100,000 each for two kinds of projects: early-stage, highly novel ideas that could have a major impact on technology and business; and mature-stage, "development" projects that will close the gap between a proven idea and a viable product.

Two additional Grainger gifts totaling $10 million have endowed the Grainger Center for Electric Machinery and Electromechanics (CEME) and a Grainger Director's Chair, which will support the center's director.  Established in 1999 with annual funding from the foundation, the Grainger CEME is dedicated to research and development of innovative electrical power systems and technologies.  Director Philip T. Krein holds the first Grainger Director's Chair. 

The Grainger CEME will also make grants to promising new projects in such areas as electric motor design and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). A collaborative network includes researchers at the U of I as well as from the University of California at Berkeley, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Purdue University, University of Wisconsin, The Ohio State University, and Georgia Institute of Technology.

The Grainger Foundation Inc. was established by William W. Grainger, a 1919 electrical engineering graduate of the U of I.  The Grainger Foundation Inc. also made possible the Grainger Engineering Library Information Center, the Grainger Awards Program, the Grainger Lecture Series, and the Advanced Power Applications Laboratory. The 1979 Grainger Chair in Electrical Engineering was the first endowed academic position established in the college.