As Behnam Pourdeyhimi, director of NWI explains, NWI’s activities actually began under NCRC in 1991, officially through a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) where NCRC was one of the first five state/industry university cooperative research centers in the country. It grew to be the largest such entity in the nation in all disciplines.
After NCRC "graduated" from NSF in 1997-1998, its activities grew significantly, and it therefore, established the NWI in 2007 as an umbrella organization for all nonwovens activities at N.C. State University. NCRC represented one of the elements—although a very important one—under NWI. NCRC however, continued as a separate "unit" at N.C. State and was never officially merged into NWI with respect to its structure, reporting, budget allocation, etc.
The merger, Pourdeyhimi notes, removes any confusion about the two units and what each one represents, and the relationship between the two. As a result of the merger, the NCRC IAB is now the NWI IAB, the executive committee of the NCRC is now the executive committee of the NWI, and the Student Activities Board (SAB) of the NCRC is now the SAB of the NWI. Otherwise, the merger does not affect the way any activities of NWI operate. Member rights and privileges remain the same, but the membership agreement will now be with NWI.
NWI is a university wide institute and reports to the vice chancellor for Research, Innovation, and Economic Development. NCRC will officially be phased out by January 2014.
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