Emerson has expanded its global network of climate solutions-focused innovation centers, with the opening of its latest center at Georgia Tech.

On Thurs., Sept. 8, 2016, Emerson celebrated the opening of The Helix Innovation Center at Georgia Tech. The new Innovation Center is located in the university’s Technology Square, and it offers a new site to aid in collaboration and innovation.

This new site expands Emerson’s global network of innovation facilities focused on climate solutions, including The Helix Innovation Center at the University of Dayton in Ohio, The Europe Solution Center in Aachen, Germany and The Emerson Innovation Centre in Pune, India. This location will serve as the focal point of Emerson’s development and collaboration on big data and Internet of Things concepts.

“Our investment in this collaboration and innovation space is a key part of our strategy to build relationships with academics, students, technology leaders and entrepreneurs. We want to create the right environment and culture for innovation to address industry challenges and better serve our customers,” said Mark Dunson, group vice president, Electronics & Solutions, Emerson.

The Helix Innovation Center at Georgia Tech is a nearly 1,600 square-foot facility in the Centergy One Building in Atlanta’s Technology Square, featuring the latest technology for effective in-person and virtual collaboration. Technology Square is a growing urban neighborhood aimed at connecting the university campus with the Atlanta business community. The area includes an increasing number of innovation centers for Fortune 500 companies, more than 50 technology startups and the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Emerson will leverage a variety of projects to explore solutions to customer problems through The Helix Innovation Center at Georgia Tech. Activities will include internal and customer ideation sessions, community and student engagements like hack-a-thons, and challenge and prototype creation for product development. Early projects already completed at the Georgia Tech facility include multiple industry and product ideation sessions, reviews of new technology and entrepreneurial concepts, early development of advanced components for Emerson building management systems, and student engagements in research projects and prototyping product concepts.

Emerson will employ approximately a dozen people in The Helix Innovation Center at Georgia Tech; roughly half will be employees who rotate through from other Emerson locations. Emerson employs more than 200 management, engineering, technical support, sales and manufacturing associates at its Kennesaw, Ga., location, which focuses on serving the retail supermarket, convenience store, refrigerated transport and foodservice industries.

The Georgia Tech facility will work in concert with The Helix Innovation Center at the University of Dayton, which opened in April 2016. The Dayton, Ohio innovation center, located in a nearly 40,000-square-foot facility, fosters an ambitious, collaborative approach to conducting research to create new technologies that address heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVACR) industry challenges. At The Helix, Emerson focuses on HVACR industry markets, including: supermarket refrigeration, food service operations, residential connected homes, data center cooling, industrial refrigeration and light commercial buildings.