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PRC Membership & Benefits

Our research is supported through two major sources namely, industry consortium and federal programs. In addition, we also work on custom projects supported by individual industry contracts. A company can become a member of the PRC industry consortium for a 2 year period in the form of full membership ($100K/year), Student membership ($65K/year) and Supply chain membership ($25K/year), as shown in Figure 1. The membership dollars are used by GT-PRC to support research projects within the three application areas defined earlier as well as in emerging technologies. An industry member gets access to all of the research projects that are part of PRC membership with benefits based on the level of membership, as shown in Figure 1. A Non-exclusive Royalty Free (NERF) IP model is used where the full members share the intellectual property (IP) being generated in the center.

GT-PRC also participates in several large multi-year projects supported by the federal government (and others) such as by NSF, DARPA, DOD, DOE, JUMP, examples of which are shown as research pillars in Figure 1, where the IP developed is contained within each program. However, as and when research results are published, they find their way into the public domain and into the base knowhow shown in Figure 1, which is then used to complement the membership projects. This ongoing development of background IP (BIP) represents a major benefit for PRC industry members since this allows for leveraging and further expansion of the research scope of the center. In addition GT-PRC teams with industry members to submit proposals for federal funding.

Figure 1: PRC Membership & Member Benefits