The Illinois Tech community and the City of Chicago came together on Mies Campus to celebrate the grand opening of the long-awaited Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship on October 25, 2018. “Pepper,” a semi-humanoid robot, was in the crowd, as well as former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who, along with namesake benefactors Ed Kaplan (ME ’65) and his wife, Carol, and other dignitaries helped to cut the ceremonial ribbon opening the institute.
“The Kaplan Institute’s focus is to turn out highly qualified, instantly employable students for jobs that haven’t been invented yet, trained to use technologies that we are just now creating, in order to address problems that we do not yet know are going to be problems,” said Howard Tullman, University Professor and executive director of the Kaplan Institute. “In this building the creative and imaginative ideas of the school’s students and faculty will become meaningful innovations for our city, region, and beyond.”