The newest addition to Wichita State’s Innovation Campus is more than just a building. 

The National Institute of Research and Digital Transformation (NIRDT) has been a program at WSU for years with the ultimate goal to advance digital transformation and apply it to various fields. The institute will occupy the newest building being built on campus by Spring 2023.

“Asgard is not a place, it’s a people,” Diane Tinker-Hurst, project manager, said. “NIRDT and the Innovation Campus isn’t necessarily a place: It’s the people. It’s the labs. It’s everybody coming together.”

Back in 2012, Innovation Campus was just a golf course. By 2014, buildings had begun to pop up across the campus.

“What the Innovation Campus provides is kind of a neutral space for multiple companies to gather with our researchers and our students to solve problems,” Tonya Witherspoon, associate vice president of industry engagement, and applied learning, said.

Now, a variety of companies have planted their roots at WSU, like Airbus and NetApp. Having a building to house NIRDT will give companies and businesses a place to work together and collaborate to continue to solve problems or questions in a variety of fields.

“The building will give us more opportunities and access,” Witherspoon said. “What it’s already providing is a way for students and faculty to come together, to solve problems … It’s a place to solve problems using technology.”

Digital transformation has four elements to it: technology, data, process and organizational change. With these elements, NIRDT will continue to tackle problems or ideas in agriculture, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, health care, energy and transportation logistics.

“The National Institute for Research and Digital Transformation’s biggest purpose is to hone the technical capabilities that Wichita State has really advanced and served to aerospace and manufacturing, and to kind of hone and pull them out and make them more accessible to all the other industries.”

Simply, digital transformation is a process that takes digital technology or data to make or modify something that already exists. NIRDT is aiming to amplify the ways we can apply various digital technologies.

“There are … millions of ways of how digital technology has changed,” Witherspoon said. “I mean, Uber has changed the taxi system, right? Netflix has changed how we watch TV. I mean, you name it, but that is really what NIRDT is trying to do.” 

With the new building will come new applied learning opportunities for students. According to wichita.edu, the opportunities will be in areas such as cloud computing and software development, cybersecurity, cyber operation and more.

“That’s really the driver of Innovation Campus is helping increase research dollars and paid applied learning opportunities for students which are part of research,” Witherspoon said.

To learn more about NIRDT, visit wichita.edu.