aerial view of Western's campus at night, with golden lights surrounded by dark trees

WWU receives National Science Foundation capacity-building grant to expand regional industry partnerships

Three universities to split $1.2 million in funding; WWU's efforts led by Chemistry's Amanda Murphy

by Mia Limmer-Lai

WWU Communications intern

Chemistry Professor Amanda Murphy’s research group recently took a tour of Tidal Vision, a local company that produces chitosan.

Western Washington University, the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, and West Texas A&M University have partnered to secure a three-year $1.2 million ($400,000 per institution) grant from the National Science Foundation to build and expand industry and nongovernmental organization partnerships. 

The NSF’s Enabling Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity (EPIIC) program awarded a total $18.6 million to 48 U.S. universities in the 2024 award year, with a focus on minority-serving institutions, primarily undergraduate institutions and community colleges. 

EPIIC grants will improve infrastructure for educational institutions, provide opportunities for underrepresented students to engage in applied research and innovation, and gives the U.S. workforce a competitive edge. Many projects emphasize key technology sectors such as AI, semiconductors, biotechnology and novel materials. 

“I think the benefits go both ways for students and the regional economy,” said Amanda Murphy, a WWU Chemistry professor and Director of the Advanced Materials Science and Engineering Center (AMSEC) who helped apply for the grant and is the Principal Investigator on the project. “This work will help provide students with opportunities and connections to help them get the jobs they want, and educate faculty about what skills the students need to be competitive for jobs in the current markets. Is what we’re teaching still useful? For example, AI is a big new thing that wasn’t relevant until just recently, so how can we adapt our curriculum and training opportunities to better serve students?” 

Amanda Murphy

The grant will fund the Strategic University Practices to Expand Research (SUPER) partnership, a collaborative project that aims to streamline institutional processes for building industry-university partnerships, establish a training program for faculty, and enrich and diversify the network of external partners. 

Located at the midpoint of the Cascadia innovation corridor between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., Western connects students to a wealth of opportunities for experiential learning, with nearly 60% of students participating in research before graduation. While the Engineering Department maintains strong regional industry connections, the SUPER project seeks to expand and deepen connections with other STEM departments and centralize partnership data across departments. 

At Western, Dean of the Graduate School and Vice Provost for Research David Patrick, and Chemistry professors Amanda Murphy and Steven Emory spearheaded the grant application process and will work to see the project to fruition.

“Numerous faculty and students work with companies all over the Puget Sound and all over the United States, and what this grant does is allow us to do more of that kind of work on a larger scale,” Patrick said. “Those projects might be more ambitious and have a greater impact on innovation in our regional economy, the students involved in the work as well as on faculty scholarship.”

The project will fund the establishment of the WWU Partnership and Innovation Center, which will coordinate data on current partnerships and work to build new ones. The grant will also fund a SUPER Partnership Academy consisting of several training workshops to teach faculty about industry research, with fellows from each of Western’s 12 STEM departments.

While many Western students conduct basic research in science and other fields, the university is working to provide more opportunities for them to apply that knowledge to create products that fulfill real-world needs, Murphy said. As an example, recent Western graduates work at Tidal Vision, a local company that converts crab shells into chitosan, a biopolymer used in water treatment and medicine.  

“Students will learn what it is like to take this fundamental knowledge they’ve learned in their degree and apply that in a corporate setting so that when students get those jobs, they’re more prepared to interact and hit the ground running,” Murphy said.

To learn more about our technical resources for industry partnerships see the AMSEC website at https://amsec.wwu.edu/ or the Scientific Technical Services website at https://scitech.wwu.edu/.