NEWARK, NJ−The Innovation Institute – a business venture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology – was launched Tuesday with government and industry leaders applauding the birth. Or more properly, the “marriage.”

NJIT President Joel S. Bloom called the new corporation a marriage of industry-driven agendas with NJIT's intellectual and technological assets.

Five innovation labs at the Institute will work on developing technological solutions to specific challenges identified by industry partners, as well as providing a range of services to those partners. The initial sectors on which the labs will focus include:

• Civil infrastructure
• Defense and Homeland Security
• Healthcare delivery systems
• Bio-pharmaceutical production, and
• Financial services.

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On Friday, NAIOP NJ holds a program at Kean University in Union focusing specifically on technology trends in commercial real estate. Cassidy Turley principal Andrew Houston will moderate a panel of industry leaders. Read more on that story here.

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At NJIT, US Sen. Cory Booker, Panasonic Corp. of North America chairman and CEO Joe Taylor, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, state Secretary of Higher Education Rochelle Hendricks, and State Sen. Raymond Lesniak attended the campus ceremony launching the Institute, to be known as NJII.

“Economic development.is in NJIT's blood and is expressly stated as part of our mission,” said the NJIT president, Bloom. “From the very beginning, our university was created to provide a skilled workforce that could serve New Jersey industries. And, throughout our history, we have viewed industry as a true partner, adapting over time and engaging in a range of business-friendly ventures, because we recognize that our success and the success of our graduates are undeniably intertwined with the success of New Jersey industry.”

Don Sebastian, president of the new NJII, said “We are not repackaging what NJIT is already producing. We are asking industry what we can do for them.”

Taylor said that NJII will answer a critical need for manufacturing companies such as Panasonic. "The future for our companies, in terms of the innovation and technology and the workers of the future, is almost solely dependent upon our relationships with academia and the universities,” Taylor said.

Booker said that "NJII is poised to help industries at every stage – from the birth of an idea in a lab to refining how that idea is produced.”