One of elab's primary sources of funding is corporate sponsors - energy efficiency and renewable energy businesses ranging from utilities to energy service providers, start-ups to large OEM's, non-profits to for-profits. Sponsorship provides a unique opportunity for corporations to have access to a valuable resource for conducting research that is too costly or too "out-of-the-box" to be accommodated within a corporate structure. It is also an opportunity for corporations to bring their business challenges and concerns to elab to see what kind of alternative solutions our researchers can identify.
Platinum Corporate Partners fund broad areas of research at elab, having unfettered access to virtually all of our research initiative, staff, facilities, and nonproprietary data as well as privileges given to Gold Corporate Sponsors. They also have the right to an elab collaborator-in-residence and tow named graduate fellows.
Being a Gold Corporate Sponsors provides all the benefits of a Corporate Sponsor with the added benefit of an elab collaborator in-residence: an employee given an office and fully integrated into the day-to-day research program of the Lab, working closely with the principal investigators and students on projects of specific interest to the sponsoring company.
Being a Corporate Sponsor connects companies with a group of Lab faculty and research staff focused on one of our research initiatives. These sponsors have access to results of the research conducted at elab, lab-wide visiting privileges, invitations to annual sponsor-only forums, and intellectual property rights negotiated on a case-by-case basis.