Partnerships and collaborations with universities

Dow partners with universities around the world and has developed many strategic relationships for recruiting and for research. We engage at every level from undergraduate to graduate to post-graduate to faculty, and through all available mechanisms. Internships, grants, sponsored research, scientist exchanges, student challenges, invited talks, symposia, continuing education, and seminars are the most common examples.

A substantial aspect of our university partnerships is through collaborative research projects. These collaborations are vital to our innovation and talent pipeline. As such, projects are chosen to have a strong alignment with long-term business objectives that have a clear path to value creation, as well as a clear technical hypothesis and scope of work that is well-suited for university research.

Our current strategic themes center on:

• The development of materials that are sustainable as measured through thorough life cycle assessments
• Process research to minimize the environmental footprint of the chemical process industries by maximizing both energy and material efficiency
• The digitalization of information and application of advanced computational methods for faster decision making in research, operations, and logistics
• New hybrid chemistries to develop novel materials with enhanced properties and performance

Specifically, Dow’s University Partnership Initiative is a focused investment with strategic university partners to develop multi-dimensional relationships to:

• Create inclusive and diverse research environments to accelerate innovation
• Train a ready workforce for the next generation of chemical industry professionals
• Hire the best and brightest innovators for the future
• Advance cutting-edge science with the fresh and leading perspectives
• Participate in the utilization of unique, world-class facilities
• Drive technology forward in the safest and most sustainable ways

The foundation of these university partnerships is grounded in long term relationships that have been formalized through agreements. University researchers are encouraged to publish the results in leading academic journals, while Dow is enabled to commercialize intellectual property under pre-defined terms.

We believe our commitment to a portfolio of genuine collaborations with universities on business-critical projects, while also generating academic publications and training students, really differentiates Dow as a preferred partner for universities.