Awarded to the university in 1986, the EDRC is one of 18 centers nationwide in the National Science Foundation's Engineering Research Center program. This program emphasizes interdisciplinary research and education in close collaboration with member companies, so as to improve the competitiveness of American industry. Designed by EDRC researchers, VuMan 2 is a wearable computer with a heads-up display Here, a graduate student uses the computer's information to perform electronic maintenance. It further emphasizes collaboration with industrial partners experiencing problems which new design methods can remedy. Thirty-five industrial partners participate in EDRC through an advisory board and through individually and collectively supported industrial projects.
Individual projects team a faculty member and graduate student with an industrial representative.
Large collective projects, known as consortia, unite multiple companies sharing a common interest with a group of faculty and students to focus on a particular design problem. The Building Computer-Aided Design Consortium Current pollution patterns on the University of Pittsburgh's landmark Cathedral of Learning are documented as part of a summer project that teams undergraduate and graduate engineering students with high school participants. At the graduate level, students learn about design theory and new design methods, both in courses and in research which may also involve collaborative work with industrial partners. Many EDRC students are hired by companies working with the center. A novel materials deposition manufacturing process developed in the EDRC uses robots, working directly from computer information, to create objects.