For Release:         Immediate – October 10, 2016

Contact:                Jerry Gretzinger, Vice President of Strategic Communications and Public Relations ­

(518) 956-7359 | jgretzinger@sunypoly.edu

SUNY Poly Receives $400,000 Worth of Cutting Edge Lab and Testing Equipment and Software from National Instruments

Equipment to be housed at SUNY Poly’s Center for Global Advanced Manufacturing (CGAM) in Utica

UTICA – SUNY Polytechnic Institute today announced that internationally renowned producer of automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software, National Instruments will provide $400,000 worth of state of the art tools and software to be housed at SUNY Poly’s Utica campus, dramatically enhancing electrical and mechanical lab capabilities.  The donation from National Instruments will provide students with access to cutting-edge, industry standard toolsets and further their preparedness to join the engineering workforce.

“This generous gift from National Instruments significantly enhances SUNY Poly’s electrical and mechanical engineering labs, and further expands the world-class research and educational capabilities our institution is known for,” said Dr. Robert Geer, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at SUNY Poly. “We are extremely grateful to National Instruments for their partnership in our mission to inspire, educate and train the innovators of tomorrow.”

“A true partnership can only happen when we find someone passionate about our mission that is willing to jointly invest time and resources to materialize it and we have found this at SUNY Poly,” said Salvador Mikel, National Instruments Academic Program Manager for the Americas. “SUNY Poly is relentlessly leading the charge to revitalize the technological economy of New York through education.”

In 2014, National Instruments first approached SUNY Poly about a partnership that would allow the company’s equipment and tools to be utilized by SUNY Poly’s top-notch engineering students, which led to the institution’s original acquisition of hardware. The resulting research and workforce training opportunities led to National Instruments’ decision to provide an additional $400,000 worth of tools and software.

The new equipment and software that National Instruments is providing to SUNY Poly enables exciting opportunities for students, including the ability to conduct reliable virtual testing on equipment and products without the need for manual measurement of things like temperature, stress, strain, and electrical current. Virtual instrumentation software allows students to use their computers to simulate all the instruments they would normally find in an electronics lab, meaning they can bring these virtual tools anywhere to diagnose problems and design solutions. It also allows significant amounts of data to be collected about a test subject to determine responses to a variety of different conditions.

“This state of the art instrumentation, including equipment and software, enables our students to utilize PC's to replace the array of measuring instruments usually found in electrical engineering laboratories.  Using innovative technologies allows our students to pursue experiential learning that is a trademark of SUNY Poly,” said Dr. William Durgin, SUNY Poly Provost. “This gift from National Instruments will serve the students and faculty of our innovative institution as we continue moving forward in our transformation as a research university.”

SUNY Poly’s Center for Global Advanced Manufacturing  (CGAM), to be located on SUNY Poly’s Utica site, will house the equipment from National Instruments and enable student and faculty access for research and related projects. CGAM promotes the formation of industrial and academic partnerships, providing space and equipment for workforce training and research in a variety of areas.

While most of the equipment and software is completely new to SUNY Poly, some will upgrade current equipment, in order to provide students with crucial, groundbreaking technology that can be used to monitor, measure, and test projects and research.

“The National Instruments partnership has now provided SUNY Poly’s College of Engineering with $1 million worth of state of the art educational and research equipment and software,” said Dr. Andrew Wolfe, Interim Dean of the College of Engineering. “This is the first piece of the transformation of the College of Engineering, which will occur as the Center for Global Advanced Manufacturing comes online in August 2017.”

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SUNY Polytechnic Institute. SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) is New York’s globally recognized, high-tech educational ecosystem, formed from the merger of the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and SUNY Institute of Technology. SUNY Poly offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in the emerging disciplines of nanoscience and nanoengineering, as well as cutting-edge nanobioscience and nanoeconomics programs at its Albany location and undergraduate and graduate degrees in technology, including engineering, cybersecurity, computer science, and the engineering technologies; professional studies, including business, communication, and nursing; and arts and sciences, including natural sciences, mathematics, humanities, and social sciences at its Utica/Rome location. Thriving athletic, recreational, and cultural programs, events, and activities complement the campus experience. As the world’s most advanced, university-driven research enterprise, SUNY Poly boasts more than $43 billion in high-tech investments and over 300 corporate partners. For information visit www.sunycnse.com andwww.sunypoly.edu.