3/24/2023
P&G and University of Cincinnati Expand Collaboration and Celebrate 15-Year Partnership with Digital Accelerator
Since 2008, P&G and the University of Cincinnati (UC) have provided world-class work opportunities for students to help advance technology that enhances P&G products and improves consumer experiences. To recognize our 15 years of partnership together, we are expanding our collaboration, affirming our commitment to all forms of digital innovation, and giving The Simulation Center at the University of Cincinnati a new name — The P&G Digital Accelerator @ The University of Cincinnati. The new name is a nod to our longstanding history of collaboration, embracing the spirit of exploration and experimentation and driving innovation with digital tools, together.
At P&G, we are passionate about innovation, and we have found that the path to game-changing advancements is often accelerated when we bring together the best minds and talent. Through strategic collaboration with the University, faculty and students, we are raising the bar to better meet the needs of consumers by building and applying digital tools that accelerate and expand innovation.
From left to right: UC President, Neville G. Pinto; P&G Senior VP of Corporate R&D, Lee Ellen Drechsler; Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation & Strategy Officer the University of Cincinnati, Ryan Hays
Photo Credit: Photos/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand
With the help of the programming and data-analytics expertise provided by students at the Center, we have been able to develop robust, flexible automated reporting methods that extract data from a variety of complex technical systems, enabling us to make faster, more informed decisions.
When P&G first partnered with UC, the Center functioned as a computer modeling lab that P&G used to improve manufacturing processes. Over the years, and with the collaboration of almost 500 students, we have expanded beyond simulation work to include a wide variety of digital technologies that are applied to solve real business challenges. Faculty and students from across many disciplines contribute work in areas that include:
- Computational chemistry and finite element analysis to test new ingredients.
- Data analysis, model automation and reliability engineering to identify insights that inform optimized product design.
- Manufacturing digital twins development and supply chain network modeling to create an efficient yet resilient product supply.
- Computational Fluid Dynamics and particle processing which are used to optimize both for performance at home and manufacturing quality and speed.
There is a demand for sustainable alternatives to replace non-biodegradable polymers and predictive models are important to accelerate development and deployment of alternative biodegradable materials. One student at the Digital Accelerator helped us build a protocol to prepare and run atomistic simulations of polymers and wrote the scripts to extract the relevant data we have used in our model.
The partnership has been so successful in showcasing what’s possible when industry and academia come together, that it has become a best-in-class model for P&G research around the world. This prompted P&G to create additional centers in England, Germany and Singapore, enabling even more opportunities for students around the world to gain valuable experience.
Through the years, more than 25 former Digital Accelerator students have gone on to join P&G full time upon graduation, harnessing the skills they developed at the Center and applying them in their careers. See some of their stories in the video below and learn more about R&D careers at P&G that advance innovation to better meet the needs of consumers.
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