As Microsoft establishes a physical location downtown, the city will serve as a sort of urban laboratory to strengthen Louisville’s core industries like health care and manufacturing, which face a risk of automation from the progression of AI technology. The AI Innovation Digital Alliance with Microsoft, in part, will help companies in vulnerable industries re-skill and up-skill their workforce to meet the changing economy.

“We are so excited to partner with Microsoft and Mayor (Greg) Fischer to leverage our workforce, prepare students for the future and strengthen our vital town-gown relationship,” UofL president Neeli Bendapudi said during the June 7 announcement.��

The Microsoft news came on the heels of the that UofL will partner with IBM to establish an IBM Skills Academy focused on digital learning and technology skills. It will be housed in a newly-created Center for Digital Transformation on the Belknap Campus and will open by the start of the fall semester.

Similar to the Microsoft partnership with the city of Louisville, IBM’s partnership with UofL will cover fast-growing technology areas like AI to bridge the growing digital divide.

“It’s important for us to be nimble with this, to be truly transformative, and to say, ‘We see what’s coming, how can we be proactive?’” Bendapudi said.��

These efforts are catching plenty of attention. Last month, Louisville Business First devoted its cover story to UofL’s position to be the impetus behind . As an example, the story spotlights UofL’s Bucks for Brains program, which has yielded a number of innovations from the nation’s top researchers and scholars who have been recruited through the program since its inception in 1997.

Success stories from the program include Cellular Therapeutics, a research group created by Dr. Suzanne Ildstad in the late 90s dedicated to developing a technology for organ transplantation. Cellular Therapeutics’ iteration, Talaris Therapeutics, secured a $100 million investment in April, which will go toward a unique cell therapy technology that improves the lives of kidney transplant recipients.

“Ildstad’s story is the embodiment of the kind of high-impact, transformative work that happens when investments are made in UofL’s mission as the only public research university in the city,” Business First says.

Such tech-focused efforts are being noticed nationally as well. In May, titled, “Four Reasons Why The University Of Louisville’s IBM Skills Academy Is A Very Smart Move,” touting the mutual benefits between the university and its corporate partner.

According to Forbes, the partnership helps address the continuing digital divide and boosts economic development in the area. It is also expected to provide a recruiting advantage for the university.

“College students express two major motives for pursuing their education – to prepare themselves for a good job and to gain knowledge so they are broadly prepared for a successful life,” the story says. “The IBM Skills Academy at the University of Louisville offers one path to help synergize the two main purposes of college. Students can acquire marketable technology skills at the same time they benefit from the broader education that good universities provide.”

In June, Forbes piggybacked off this idea with another article illustrating the , a nonprofit membership organization comprised of Fortune 500 executives, major university presidents and other educational leaders. Once again, the IBM/UofL partnership was highlighted as an example.

“American businesses are increasingly taking the lead in developing and ‘up-skilling’ their workforce in critical digital and technological competencies. Whether it’s through increasingly generous employer-provided educational benefits … or through specific company-university partnerships like the , the rise of business-directed and employer-supported curricula is one of higher education’s most noteworthy trends,” the story says.

Such efforts were also highlighted in , which focused specifically on how the university is helping the city of Louisville bring tech training to scale. The story spells out the need for such work, noting that Louisville has just 79% of the technology jobs it should have for a city its size. In the past decade, Louisville has added just 17,000 jobs in the professional scientific technical services industry, for example, compared to Nashville, which added 75,000 such jobs.��

Based on estimates, the city of Louisville would need to add about 1,500 jobs annually for four years to catch up. This is why UofL is stepping up.

In addition to corporate partnerships, UofL is also sharpening its focus on commercialization. For example, in May, the university to help guide research-backed invention to market.��

UofL ranks as one of only 120 U.S. “Research 1” universities with “very high research activity,” according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher ����ֱ��. The EIRs will amplify UofL’s existing efforts aimed at getting technologies born from that research to market, which include a “superfecta” of .

Funding for the EIRs comes from the Louisville Entrepreneurship Acceleration Partnership (LEAP), another public-private partnership led by UofL and backed by the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development.

LEAP was . During the launch, President Bendapudi noted the objectives for LEAP were to commercialize university research, enhance the region’s reputation for innovation, grow jobs and economic development and build the next generation of leaders.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg of all the work on campus that has gone into helping transform the city and the region into an innovation hub. There is also the impact that Giddy, the Hive, FirstBuild and others have made.

In September, UofL will team up with GE-backed FirstBuild to host a , which will include exhibitions, competitions, workshops and more. According to Kevin Nolan, CEO of GE Appliances, the Maker Faire will be the largest gathering of inventors, creators and makers that this city has ever seen. Mayor Greg Fischer added that the event will help the city thrive and grow. And, as all of this progress is happening, the University of Louisville is at the center of it all.

Specifically, the academy will provide curriculum and educational tools concentrated on eight fast-growing technology areas: artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, cybersecurity, cloud computing, internet of things, quantum computing, data science and design thinking.

Through IBM’s existing Academic Initiative, IBM will make available software and cloud technology with an estimated value up to $5 million a year.

“But the value of this far exceeds that figure. When you have two great institutions working together, who can say where the opportunity lies?” said UofL President Neeli Bendapudi, who made the partnership happen along with Naguib Attia, IBM’s vice president of Global University Programs, after the two met recently at an event.

This skills academy is the first of its kind that IBM has developed with a higher education institute. The company is in discussions with four universities to open similar academies in the United States. Attia said the initiative is starting here because of Bendapudi’s “passionate leadership.”

“When I heard about IBM’s vision to try and bridge the digital divide, I knew we had to work quickly,” Bendapudi said. “It is important for us to be nimble with this, to be truly transformative, to say, ‘We see what’s coming, how can we be proactive?’ I am extremely grateful to IBM.”

Bendapudi said students will benefit from the academy through course credit and IBM certification, while faculty will be trained on skills curriculum to then be able to teach colleagues and students. But the benefits are expected to extend well beyond UofL’s campus, as trained faculty will also serve as workforce development agents for the community.

Attia said over 120 million jobs will be affected within the next three years by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.

Indeed, the share of jobs requiring AI skills has . Global spending on blockchain solutions in 2018 equated to $2.1 billion and is expected to . Meanwhile, the global cybersecurity market, currently valued around $120 billion, is expected to jump .��

“These skills are the most critical issue of our time and the south has the highest number of employees without an education beyond high school,” Attia said. “If we don’t work to close this gap, it could have a negative impact on millions of people.”

Because of the pervasiveness of these emerging technologies and the speed at which they’re evolving, Attia noted that such skills training will be available for all students, regardless of their area of study.

“The future is not going to leave the good people of Kentucky behind,” he said.

City, state leaders react to announcement

Underscoring the impact this announcement has locally and state wide, today’s press conference was attended by Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, Congressman John Yarmuth, Terry Gill, secretary of the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development, and – via video –Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“I attend a lot of events where I can say ‘this is a great day for Louisville.’ But with this announcement, I can say this is an important day for Louisville; this is a critical day for Louisville,” Yarmuth said. “The world is changing at 100 miles an hour and this initiative will deal with issues of the future, including the benefits and challenges of technological change.”

Mayor Greg Fischer added that the academy will help build on the city of Louisville’s employment growth trajectory from the past eight years – about 80,000 new jobs – noting that nearly every new position includes some technology skill requirement.

“Our goal is to quintuple the amount of employees receiving technology training every year and this (partnership) is exactly what we’re talking about,” Fischer said. “If we’re not integrating technology in everything we do, we’re really missing the boat.

In a prepared statement shown via video, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell said the academy will further advance UofL’s upward trajectory and help push the boundaries of technology while providing the tools students, faculty and researchers need to be leaders in their fields.

“We shouldn’t have to rely on the west coast and the northeast corridor to be nimble in high-tech areas,” Bendapudi said. “This is a game changer for UofL and for the commonwealth.”

More information about the IBM Academic Initiative is .��

Check out footage from the press conference below: