Carnegie Mellon And Bombardier Team Up For Infrastructure Incubator

Carnegie Mellon University, in partnership with transportation manufacturer Bombardier Inc. is slated to open a $2.2 million research center in the fall to look at technology innovation in infrastructure and transit, the university said.

The center is part of a larger Pennsylvania Smart Infrastructure Incubator that is designed to bring together industry, economic development organizations, government and academia to establish western Pennsylvania as a hub for infrastructure innovation.

"Smart infrastructure is the merging of cyber infrastructure with traditional civil infrastructure so that we manage our civil infrastructure in a smarter and more sustainable way," said Matthew Sanfilippo, executive director of the incubator program. It can mean sensors in bridges monitoring the structure or it could be sensors in a building overseeing energy usage or creating more efficient and available transit systems, he added.

The concept of the incubator, which will include a lab and collaboration center built in existing buildings, was developed in November, Sanfilippo said. This new program is the evolution of the university's existing Center for Sensed Critical Infrastructure Research (CenSCIR).

With the corporate partners, such as Bombardier, the research can be transitioned into product, he said.


The Bombardier Collaborative Center will be located within CMU’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at the school's Oakland campus in Pittsburgh. Other sponsors of the incubator program are expected to be announced. In addition to the industry partners the center received a $1 million grant from the commonwealth under the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program.