- President Ono and I are really working together to reverse course.

And make sure that that diaspora of people who have left the state for other reasons and perhaps other opportunities, really see this as the place of opportunity for them and their families.

And that's an important equation that both their work and their life has to co-mingle, in order for them to be comfortable in the state of Michigan.

And we're working together with the MEDC and with the Governor's office to really make sure that our universities as well as the ecosystem, really is that warm, welcoming environment for everyone.

- Well, and I wanna talk exactly about the work that both of you can do.

.

So gimme an example of what Michigan State University is doing right now as we talk about workforce development.

- One of the things we're doing is developing a new engineering and digital innovation center.

And this is to really invert the way we think about colleges.

It's not a college of engineering.

It is six colleges coming together for students who are interested in engineering, but also in digital innovation and in the new economy that's coming that they themselves will both participate in and will build.

And so this new center allows us to teach in new and innovative ways and to do a new kind of research that asks questions that are orthogonal to the way we've thought in the past.

- President Ono, I feel like every day I am hearing about some new initiative from the University of Michigan.

Whether it's EVs, whether it's startup.

Tell me what the U"s doing right now in terms of workforce development.

- Well, it's a huge amount of work.

Thanks a lot for the shout out about the electric vehicles.

But we just launched a $55 million dollar Quantum Research Institute.

And we're very excited about that and the role that's gonna play moving forward.

As you know, we have just launched a global super conductor facility, which is really global in nature.

And we're partnering with the other universities in the URC.

Michigan State University and Wayne State University, but also Washington Community College, in really positioning Michigan to be hopefully a recipient of funding from the CHIPS for science acts.

- And that's been this fascinating conversation and, President Ono, I know we'll also talk a little later about sort of workforce and talent development.

But the theme seems to be, aside from "The Power of &" which we're gonna get to, but also the need for institutions to work together.

And so you said the URC, for folks who may be new to the state or it's the university research corridor.

Theresa Woodruff.

Tell me a little bit about what work is going on right now with the URC that you're excited about.

- This has been a 10 year partnership and right now I think the partnership has never been stronger.

And as President Ono just said, we're working together as R1 universities as well as with community colleges.

And to me that's "The Power of &," that is going to allow us to take students who are interested in coming in from any corridor, whether directly to a four year or through the two years.

And I think one of the things that we're doing is developing this workforce positioning for EVs themselves.

And that's going to allow all of us to have more opportunities for those students who graduate from this top ranked cluster of universities that really outpaces by student numbers and by research dollars, any other cluster in America.

President Ono.

- Yeah.

I mean, well we start off with the top 10 issue.

As Theresa said, we are number one in terms of the talent that we produce.

And the $2.7 billion dollars in research is staggering.

And people don't know that it's really a great news story, but also is gonna be the seed corn for future innovation and really fueling startup companies that are coming off out of our companies, and also attracting new industries to Michigan.