Secretary of the Navy Announces Naval Innovation Center at Naval Postgraduate School

SALINAS, CA – During a panel discussion on United States national security priorities, Secretary of the United States Navy, Carlos Del Toro and Rep. Jimmy Panetta announced the new Naval Innovation Center (NIC) at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). The NIC constitutes a state-of-the-art educational venue to test multi-disciplinary, project-based innovation for the Armed Forces.

"Those familiar with the Naval Postgraduate School realize and appreciate its potential for providing the technological edge to meet the ever-changing wartime demands that lie well beyond the west coast," said Rep. Panetta, Member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). "The new Naval Innovation Center will accelerate the work done at NPS by granting our men and women in uniform the unique opportunity to use advanced technology, models, and simulation rooms in classified spaces and manufacture new multidisciplinary designs and stimulate innovation. I thank Secretary Del Toro for responding to my advocacy for NPS, for his understanding and appreciation of what NPS has to offer, and also his confidence and investment in the NPS and its students, faculty, and leadership. This expansion of the school's innovative base will ensure that our servicemembers and armed services remain competitive and NPS remains a part of our community and national security"

"I am also directing the creation of a Naval Innovation Center at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California – right in the heart of our nation's leading technology corridor," said Secretary Del Toro while speaking at Columbia University. "This will serve as a premier military education facility tailored to innovation and experimentation, serving as a technology resource for Navy and Marine Corps warfighting development commands, as well as a go-to partner of the defense industrial base, the technology sector, and academia."

The Naval Innovation Center was designed to advance NPS' competitive edge and increase the impact of the United States Navy. Specifically, the NIC will bring together expert faculty, the nation's most capable servicemembers across the Armed Forces, and industry. Rapid prototyping, collaborative reconfigurable rooms, wargaming centers, modeling and simulation centers, and combat innovation centers are just a few of the new capabilities that the NIC will offer to the unique defense community in Monterey as well as the entirety of the west coast.

###