![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/24862_5M5A7767.rev.1755801802.jpg\")
Travis Brown, Bryce Himebaugh and Ryan Henderson speak at IU Economic Development Summit.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Travis Brown, Bryce Himebaugh and Ryan Henderson speak at IU Economic Development Summit.<\/p>\n
Photo by Geoffrey B Coryell, IU Luddy Indianapolis Communications.<\/p>\n
\n During the inaugural IU Economic Development Summit hosted by University Relations<\/a> on August 12, the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering<\/a>, with its Shoemaker Innovation Center<\/a> and Cheng Wu Build Clinic<\/a>, hosted a session that explored new collaborations with local nonprofits, such as Conexus Indiana<\/a>, to foster a manufacturing pipeline and help students take advantage of Indiana\u2019s manufacturing resources and expertise.\n<\/p>\n \n The focus of IU\u2019s new summit was to discuss how its leaders across Indiana are building economic development partnerships to drive workforce development and talent pipelines, university-industry collaboration and innovation, entrepreneurship and small business support, and community and regional development.\n<\/p>\n \n The need for greater collaboration is there, said Travis Brown<\/a>, Senior Executive Assistant Dean and Executive Director of the Shoemaker Innovation Center, and the Luddy School has the resources, and student innovators and entrepreneurs, to take physical products from prototype through to manufacturing while utilizing state of Indiana businesses.\n<\/p>\n \n The goal is to formalize new partnerships with local economic development groups, Brown said, and ultimately increase student readiness, enhance manufacturer-student engagement and grow the manufacturing pipeline.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cThe Shoemaker Innovation Center has transitioned from general entrepreneurship support, with the migration of the Shoebox incubation program and StartupIU newsletter and website to IU Innovates, to specializing in product development, leveraging the existing product management programs in conjunction with the new product development support provided through the Cheng Wu Build Clinic.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Added Brown, \u201cThe mission of the Shoemaker Innovation Center has always been to promote cross-disciplinary, experiential education. Collaborating with local nonprofit organizations, like Conexus Indiana, can provide the industry expertise and ecosystem connections students need to bridge the gap between softtech and hardtech within the Luddy School to facilitate students converting their intellectual property into commercializable products.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Brown was one of three speakers at the summit, which was titled, \u201cPartnership to Foster a Manufacturing Pipeline through University Innovation.\u201d The others were Bryce Himebaugh<\/a>, Intelligent Systems Engineering associate chair and clinical associate professor, as well as Cheng Wu Build Clinic faculty director; and Ryan Henderson<\/a>, senior director of Innovation and Digital Adoption, Conexus Indiana.\n<\/p>\n \n During the summit, Brown emphasized the role of Indiana University in training the next generation of manufacturers, as well as developing innovations to generate demand for Indiana\u2019s manufacturing resources.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cThe Cheng Wu Build Clinic offers students experiential learning opportunities related to the engineering prototypes for student innovators. Collaboration with industry leaders will allow students to engage early in the development process to ensure that manufacturing considerations are incorporated into the design,\u201d said Himebaugh.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cOther states have developed strong models for connecting manufacturers and student innovators,\u201d said Henderson. \u201cOur conversation at the summit opened the door to exploring similar opportunities in Indiana, where industry leaders and student entrepreneurs can come together to drive product development and reinforce our state\u2019s leadership in advanced manufacturing and logistics.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Brown extolled the value of the summit for generating ideas on what skills universities should teach students to prepare them for a career in manufacturing and showcasing how the existing expertise of the state\u2019s manufacturers can be better leveraged to commercialize the innovations emanating from universities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travis Brown, Bryce Himebaugh and Ryan Henderson speak at IU Economic Development Summit. Photo by Geoffrey B Coryell,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":165284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[745,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-165283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-computing","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115069928883907835","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}