
Across the U.S., STEM PhD programs are facing a pivotal challenge: how to prepare doctoral students for impactful careers in industry, national labs, healthcare, and other sectors beyond academia. While most graduates take these non-academic paths, traditional training still emphasizes academic research and offers limited exposure to the complex, real-world problems tackled in industry settings.
To close this gap, and following recommendations from previous workshops in 2020-2021, LeHigh researchers, led by Himanshu Jain, PI, piloted a new model of PhD education—the Pasteur Partnership PhD (P3). There was overwhelming interest from students but only a small fraction could be enrolled due to challenges in forming required industry-university partnerships.
Academic leaders, industry partners, government agencies, and international experts are invited to collaboratively address the challenges and provide solutions for forming industry-university partnerships for doctoral education in the United States.
Workshop highlights include:
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Expert insights from leaders in STEM graduate education, research, and workforce development
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International perspectives from institutions with established industry-integrated PhD programs
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Working sessions focused on actionable strategies for building and sustaining partnerships
Together, we’ll explore what it takes to embed real-world relevance into doctoral education—and ensure the next generation of PhD talent is prepared to drive innovation across sectors.
👉 Learn more about the workshop.
📅 August 4–6, 2025
📍 National Academies Building, 2101 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC
This Workshop is organized by Lehigh University’s Pasteur Partners Ph.D. (P3) program. It is a part of National Science Foundation’s Innovation in Graduate Education project: Partnership with Researchers in Industry for Doctoral Education (PRIDE).

June 22 – 25, 2025 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
This is an invitation to participate in the NSF Grantees’ Poster Session at the next American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference, which is scheduled to be held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on June 22-25, 2025. It is intended for PIs with active projects in engineering education or closely related fields.
The NSF Grantees Poster Session is an invitation-only session for authors with NSF-sponsored projects related to engineering education. ASEE is a publish-to-present conference, so authors will be required to submit a paper to participate in the poster session. This year the session will only accept brief papers (2-5 pages, including references).
