Princeton University’s newly created Energy and Environment Corporate Affiliates program, which looks to encourage sustainable energy and environmental technologies, has signed its first charter member in PSEG.
According to Lynn Loo, the deputy director of Princeton’s Andlinger Center, the corporate affiliates program is designed to foster partnerships between member companies and Princeton faculty to “create investment opportunities that revitalize the energy sector, disseminate deep knowledge to inform our policy leaders, and develop measures to protect the environment.”
Ralph Izzo, president and CEO of PSEG, said the corporate affiliates program is a bridge between academic research and corporations. “It is important that we transfer ideas developed in academia to the marketplace, and lessons learned in the marketplace to academia — especially in advancing sustainable approaches to energy and the environment,” Izzo said.
The program is an endeavor of the Andlinger Center, the university’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Princeton Environmental Institute, and the School of Architecture. It gives member companies special access to university science, economic, and public policy experts, shared laboratory facilities, and students in exchange for financial support. Membership fees will seed new research and education initiatives in sustainable energy and environmental protection.
Charter membership is $500,000 per year. General membership is $100,000 a year; affiliate membership $10,000 per year. Each level carries a minimum two-year commitment.
Membership also puts sponsors in touch with Princeton’s affiliated science centers — Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab, and the Princeton Institute for the Science & Technology of Materials.
Charter and general members will have seats on the affiliates advisory committee, which will oversee the strategic directions of the program. Charter members also have pre-negotiated, royalty-free licenses to intellectual property derived from the research they fund. Charter members also will be able to assign employees to work on campus.
Loo said that affiliate membership is designed to encourage “participation from small, growing, and entrepreneurial businesses” with fewer than 100 employees. Ultimately, the university wants about two dozen charter or general members and about 10 affiliate members. The inaugural annual meeting of members will be held at the university next summer.
Visit www.princeton.edu/acee/corporate-affiliates for more information.
