Notable contributions and programs
TechTown, Detroit’s only research and technology park, is home to more than 40 companies. A business incubator established in 2004, TechTown leases office space and provides support and the access to capital needed to build high-tech companies. It is a partnership among Wayne State, General Motors and Henry Ford Health System.- TechTown includes NextEnergy, Michigan’s nonprofit alternative energy research center, which partnered with Wayne State to create the National Biofuel Energy Lab. Researchers there develop ways to use biodiesel fuel (made from renewable resources such as vegetable oil), which is biodegradable, nontoxic and has significantly fewer emissions than petroleum-based diesel when burned.
- Wayne State is the home of the National Institutes of Health Perinatology Research Branch, which supports research related to pregnancy and maternal health, embryonic development, fetal growth and infant well-being.
- The National Science Foundation ranks WSU among the nation’s top 60 public universities in research expenditures, which total more than $225 million annually.
- Wayne State has one of the nation’s largest graduate schools, with more than 200 bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, professional, specialist and certificate programs in 12 schools and colleges.
- Wayne State’s WDET-FM runs the Detroit Radio Information Service, which offers free reading services to people who are blind or printimpaired. It is the only service of its kind in the region.
- Wayne State’s nationally recognized Math Corps, a combined academic enrichment and mentoring program, brings middle and high school students from Detroit to campus to learn math from WSU students and faculty.
- About 30 percent of all practicing physicians in Michigan have received all or part of their medical training at Wayne State; 43 percent of all practicing physicians in the tri-county area have been trained at Wayne State.
- Engineering Professor Sean Wu developed software that allows users to see threedimensional digital images of sound as it travels through space. The software can quickly and accurately analyze unwanted noise and provide more cost-effective noise diagnosis, product engineering and quality control testing. His technology has been licensed to a start-up company, SenSound, located in TechTown.
- WSU’s Hilberry Theatre is the nation’s only true graduate rotating repertory company. Students from across the country come to Detroit to participate in its rigorous audition process, and only about 50 of the most promising theater artists are accepted each year.
- Biology Professor Phil Cunningham has developed technologies to allow rapid identification of any mutation that might produce an antibiotic-resistant bacterial strain. This technology has been licensed to a start-up company, RiboNovix, Inc.
- Engineering Professor Greg Auner founded and directs the Smart Sensors and Integrated Microsystems Program at WSU, which develops novel materials, methods and prototype devices for everything from automotive, environmental and biomedical applications to advances in energy, communications, and aerospace technology. A start-up company, Visca LLC, resulted from Auner’s work at WSU and is located in TechTown.
- King Hay Yang, professor of biomedical and mechanical engineering, is recognized worldwide for his crash injury research. He has developed computer models that simulate impact responses for various parts of the body, which will ultimately save millions of dollars in crash testing, improve vehicle safety, and decrease injuries.
- Technology developed at the School of Medicine is the basis of a new medical device for superoxygenating blood after a heart attack. It has been licensed to a company, TherOx, that will soon begin clinical trials to evaluate SuperSaturated Oxygen to reduce tissue damage.
- A team of researchers led by Robert Thomas, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has developed technology to detect tiny cracks in material, even if the defects are buried beneath a surface that has been coated, patched or painted. It can check for cracked engine blocks, damaged turbine blades, defects in pipelines, flaws in wheels and cracks in airplanes.
- Jayne Weiss, MD, professor of ophthalmology and pathology at the School of Medicine, discovered an abnormal gene that causes the inherited and visually disabling disease Schnyder’s Crystalline Corneal Atrophy.
