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Industry Partners

Student presenting poster to industry partner at table during MDE expo at the Inn at Virginia Tech
MDE student presenting at MDE Expo to Industry Partner Jeryl Hill, Engineering Project Manager of Science Systems and Applications Inc. (subcontract of NASA).

Industry Sponsorship FAQs

  • The Major Design Experience (MDE) is a two-semester course that provides ECE undergraduate students an “industry-like” experience that includes technical, business, and professional skill development; and a realistic first engineering team experience, at scale and in context, in a safe environment, to learn, grow, and thrive. 
  • This experience is achieved through collaboration with industry partners who are looking to expose young engineers to their discipline(s) or their problem domain(s).
  • Expose young engineers to your discipline(s) or your problem domain(s)
  • Extended interviews, mentoring, and motivation working with design teams
  • Influence their design thinking, innovation, and creativity
  • Improved understanding of how they feel, think, and work
  • Recurring, iterative, and adaptive challenges (resilience, grit)
  • Interesting & suitable challenges & projects
mde sponsor benefits flow chart

The fee to sponsor a Major Design team is $7,500. 

Visit our recent projects page to learn more about what previous students have accomplished and to view PDFs of our MDE Expo brochures.

Thank you for the support! We are excited to have you sponsor one of our student teams. Fill out the MDE Project Request Form to get started.

Opportunities for sponsorship are always available. Please reach out to Joe Adams for more details about how your company can benefit from project and event sponsorships and more.

  • The customer will be a formally identified company or agency member that sponsors the project. 
  • The customer will provide the design problem and support throughout the two semesters, and project sponsorship. 
  • The customer will provide any unique and necessary non-confidential hardware/software needed for the project. 
  • It is expected that the customer will provide a minimum of four hours per month to perform such tasks as project design reviews, RFP generation, and monthly status reporting. 
  • In addition, the customer should attend the culminating industry day expo sessions.

View the MDE Sponsor Handbook here.

MDE Industry Partners

The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering would like to express our sincerest gratitude and appreciation to our sponsors for their dedicated support.

MDE Sponsor Logos
MDE sponsor logos (page 2)
mde sponsor logos (page 3)

Fall 2024 MDE Expo

Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024
@ The Inn at Virginia Tech

Spring 2025 MDE Expo

Wednesday, Apr. 23, 2025
@ The Inn at Virginia Tech
Ready to sponsor a team?
Fill out the MDE Project Request Form.
View the MDE Sponsor Handbook.