MI2 News and Updates

The Metals Innovation Initiative, or MI2, is an example of the collaborative environment that Team Kentucky and KY Innovation work hard to build and maintain. This new initiative is a coalition of metal industry executives collaborating to make Kentucky the preeminent destination for metals innovation. The organization, launched in 2022, was founded by companies in aluminum, stainless steel, and copper.

The inaugural session was hosted at University of Louisville Innovation Center downtown and featured presentations from GLI leadership, the University of Louisville’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership, and the World Trade Center. The second session will focus on the region’s bourbon industry and will be hosted at Brown-Forman. Participants selected for the first cohort include(s)…Venkata (Vijay) Kamineni, chief executive officer, Metals Innovation Initiative.

In the short time that it has been open, the WKU Collaborative SmartSpace is already home to a USC Civic Imagination Incubator, an MIT Open Documentary Lab, a Workforce Participation innovation lab, a recycling consortium that is forming, and meetings of the newly formed Metals Innovation Initiative, not to mention teams from companies like Logan Aluminum and Envision and various start-ups and solopreneurs.

Innovation is a significant driver of Kentucky’s current economic success, including the state’s significant investments in electric-vehicle manufacturing, agriculture technology, metals innovation and more. These growing industries are built on the same three pillars seen in every innovative business: research-driven products and/or services, access to capital and talent.

It’s home to creative companies and organizations like the technology-heavy Eyeconic and the Metals Innovation Initiative, and yet the cutting-edge work at Western Kentucky University’s Innovation Campus on Nashville Road is largely going unnoticed by locals. That could soon be changing.

KTW’s other new Innovation Campus neighbors include a variety of innovative companies and entities from the region, like global manufacturers Holley Inc., Logan Aluminum, and Envision AESC, and the new Metals Innovation Initiative, which is working to promote Kentucky as the preeminent destination for metals innovation.