CHESS Membership

The CHESS Center is interested in forming and maintaining meaningful relationships with industry, small businesses, and government agencies. Solidification of the research interests of a member of the Center is done through a membership agreement that outlines the roles of the member and university through the period of the relationship.

Our goal as a Center is to find interested partners who have identified CHESS as a general research area, and are willing to start a relationship based on the CHESS research goals and the benefits received through interaction. CHESS members have access to world-class researchers and visionaries, and can leverage government-funded research that is performed by the Center. They receive feedback on the progress of the Center through formal reviews and participate in the setting of goals and research directions.

Relationship, not Sponsorship

Membership in CHESS is not work-for-hire, but rather participation in a broad, long-term agenda focused on pre-competitive research. Members accrue benefits through person-to-person interactions with visionary leaders, some of the best graduate student researchers anywhere, and other members (even competitors) in the context of long-term, pre-competitive research. They also get early access to software tools, and, at appropriate levels of commitment, the opportunity to place Visiting Industrial Fellows who can be resident at the university and perform research alongside students and faculty.

Principles of Intellectual Property

CHESS researchers are interested in maximizing the impact of their research. To achieve this, CHESS maintains an open atmosphere that encourages early and frequent publication and other public dissemination of research results. The emphasis is on open collaborative projects with multiple participants (and often, multiple funding sources). Members do not expect to get exclusive access to intellectual property, software, or research data. Instead, they get access to insights about trends and opportunities, foundational theories and techniques, open-source software, and people.

Who is already a member of CHESS?

You can find a list on our Partners page.

How does my company join?

In order to become a CHESS Member, your first step is to begin a conversation with the CHESS Executive Director or one of the Principal Investigators. After beginning this conversation, we will work with you to choose the appropriate level of interaction for your company, and then finalize the membership agreement.

Length of membership

When becoming a member of CHESS we encourage a length of 5 years, with the option to end the agreement at the end of each year. The reason for this length is to avoid institutional delays each year, thus providing more time for research and relationships.

Legal and Additional Information

The menu to the left has links to each of these topics, which are fully explained in the Industrial Membership Agreement (boilerplate).