USC and Siemens Corporation Partnership Hopes To Help Students Prepare for Jobs

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The massive partnership will give students of the University of South Carolina more advanced technology and machinery.

“We have to make sure we have a tech-savvy, highly capable workforce that can come into those environments and hit the ground running with new ideas and new brainpower,” Raj Batra, Siemens President of Digital Factory Division, said.

The Dean of the College of Engineering and Computing Hosein Haj-Hariri said the $628 million grant allows their students to make advancements in the aerospace and automotive industries, and their students exploring will be limitless.

“We want the students to have the ability to use the tools to address problems we don’t even know exists,” Haj-Hariri said.

The university president and Siemens officials said allowing the students to get virtual and hands-on experience in the new Digital Factory Innovation Lab will give the graduates a huge advantage once they enter the workforce.

“All these advanced digital technologies that the university students will use and the faculty will educate the students on, are the same technologies that are used in 140 companies all over the world,” Batra said.

“I think Siemens is going to want them. I think Boeing is going to want them. I think IBM is going to want them. I think certainly Michelin is going to want them. And I want them too,” the University’s President Harris Pastides said.

Haj-Hariri said the tools and technology the university can now provide allows one engineer to do more than what a floor full, or two floors full of engineers could do twenty years ago.

“There’s a new level of tech savviness, if you will, with the youth today. And they bring an energy and excitement and they bring new ideas. They’ll challenge us,” Del Costy, Siemens Senior Vice President and Managing Director said.

The space is not the only thing the University of South Carolina will be able to use. They plan on adding 13 thousand square-feet to the facility.