Corporate Applied Research

As the nation's leader in hands-on engineering and computer science education, Cal Poly provides a project- and design-centered environment that supports applied research in a wide range of multidisciplinary or discipline-focused areas. Corporate sponsorship of faculty and student applied research projects offers unique opportunities for industry/university collaboration and problem solving.

Applied research projects generally fall into one of four general types:

• Project-Based Learning Institute
• Sponsored Projects - Sponsored projects can take advantage of individual faculty expertise and research interests or they may involve multidisciplinary groups of students and faculty working on well defined project objectives with very specific milestones and deliverables.
• Graduate Student Projects - Graduate Student Projects tend to be individual and technically oriented.
• Capstone Projects - Faculty-advised student groups and teams undertake Capstone Projects in the context of a senior series course or a club project. Examples include the annual Design/Build/Fly teams or the Ford-sponsored FutureTruck project.
• Senior Projects - All Cal Poly undergraduate students are required to complete a Senior Project, which includes design, analysis, fabrication, testing, and completion of a final report. The Senior Project can be done on an individual basis, or it can be an integrated effort resulting in several projects completed in a cooperative effort by students of varied disciplines. This "team" approach is often well suited to broader problems confronting an industrial sponsor.

To participate in sponsored research at the College of Engineering contact:

Ed Sullivan, Associate Dean
College of Engineering
Cal Poly
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
805-756-2131
esulliva@calpoly.edu