U of I to Open Chicago Manufacturing Institute (Greg Hinz, Crain's)

"Gov. Pat Quinn will announce today in his State of the State speech that the Urbana-Champaign school, in partnership with its National Center for Supercomputing Applications and private companies, will be forming an Illinois Manufacturing Lab likely to be located in the central area of Chicago.

The facility will be a somewhat smaller, more applications-based version of the UI Labs tech-research center that was announced in January by U of I President Robert Easter and others. The prime goal will be to make the state's manufacturers more competitive, something that has become increasingly challenging as overseas firms take control of many of the world's factories."