Vice President Kamala Harris toured UW-Milwaukee’s clean energy lab and participated in a roundtable discussion during her visit to Milwaukee on Tuesday, May 4, to discuss her goal to invest in innovation and research at universities like UWM.
“Our commitment is to invest more in R&D. We have fallen behind over the last 25 years. We need to be a leader,” Harris said.
Harris visited UWM to discuss the American Jobs Plan, a $2.3 trillion package to “spur innovation, create jobs, fight climate change and improve aging infrastructure,” according to the Campus Update from the office of Chancellor Mark Mone.
“I had the honor of welcoming Vice President Harris to our Milwaukee campus and introducing her to a small, but powerhouse in-person audience and to an expansive televised audience,” Mone said in the update. “In our conversation, she stressed the importance of the research that we are doing, the educational pathways we are creating for all, and the impact that our education and research are having on everyday citizens.”
Associate Dean Andy Graettinger led Harris in a tour of the UWM-DOE Industrial Assessment Center. The tour included several researchers from the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Professor Adel Nasiri and UWM alumnus and Chief Technology Officer at Imagen Ezana Mekonnen, Professor and IAC Director Ryo Amano and research assistant Alaa Hasan were among the researchers at the tour, according to the update from Mone.
The tour included two laboratories. One focused on Wind tunnel research on wind turbines. The second focused on sustainable energy research on microgrids and batteries.
“The local area is who we are serving. That’s our community,” said Graettinger. “We get our students locally, and they stay and have jobs locally. And the technology we do here really has a worldwide impact.”
Harris also participated in a routable discussion, featuring U.S. Sen. Tammy Bladwin, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, Dr. Wilkistar Otieno, Milwaukee Public Library Director Joan Johnson and Milwaukee Public Schools’ Lincoln Avenue School Principal Damaris Ayala.
Otieno is an associate professor and department chair for Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and assistant director of UWM’s Industrial Assessment center. She leads a team of students in research surrounding clean energy, assessing companies’ energy usage. She spoke with the Vice President, and said it was very clear that Harris was interested in sustaining research like the work they are doing at UWM.
“To see that she chose to come to UWM for me, that’s impactful. Because I know the role that UWM has in this community, and so I was very grateful that she chose to come to UWM,” Otieno said.
The Vice President pitched the Biden-Harris Infrastructure proposal again at the end of the roundtable discussion.
“We must invest with a sense of urgency. We need to invest in our universities, in our children and in our people,” said Harris. “It’s not going to be easy. But we must have investment in innovation.”