Industrial Program begins
From the earliest days, NCSA’s leadership saw the power of working with industry-leading corporations. Close partnerships guaranteed that the technologies emerging from the center and the expertise that made its home at the center would be applied to real-world challenges. In the spring of 1986, the center kicked off its Industrial Partners program with a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal. By August, the program, now called the Private Sector Program, had established a $3 million relationship with Kodak.
Over the years, Kodak developed photo CD technology capable of zooming in, enlarging, cropping, or rotating images transmitted over the Internet, as well as a file format that supports full 24-bit color management so that images are photo-realistic.
More than 20 Fortune 500 companies have since collaborated with NCSA. The center helped Eli Lilly usher in the era of rational drug design. Sears improved its fraud-detection techniques. And Motorola developed new mobile phone features now part of the industry standard.