Tennessee-based architecture, engineering and consultancy services firm Gresham Smith has entered a formal industry partnership with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, aimed at addressing some of the biggest challenges within the design industry, exploring emerging trends and driving innovation in the field of engineering.
As part of the agreement, professionals from Gresham Smith will collaborate with students in Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
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‘Carnegie Mellon has a world-class engineering programme, and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with their faculty and students to come up with bold ideas to some of the biggest challenges our industry faces and lead through change,’ said Mike Sewell, director of innovation at Gresham Smith.
The first major initiative under the partnership will be a hackathon held at Gresham Smith’s headquarters in Nashville in February 2026 during Engineers Week. Cross-disciplinary teams made up of students from Carnegie Mellon and professionals from Gresham Smith will collaborate on two big-picture engineering challenges shaping the built environment: data centre sustainability and resiliency, and next-generation energy delivery and support.
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As the demand for data grows, so does its environmental impact. Teams competing in the data centre sustainability and resiliency hackathon will consider how to design site infrastructure wisely under water and grid pressures to serve communities more responsibly.
Meanwhile, with grid demand rising, clients are looking for smarter, more resilient solutions. Teams in the next-generation energy delivery and support hackathon will investigate flexible, forward-thinking strategies that can be created to help meet rising energy demands and keep progress powered.
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The teams will research these challenges with subject matter experts and pitch their ideas. This also paves the way for additional academic research aligned with these topics to be studied further.
‘At Carnegie Mellon, we place a significant value on giving our students hands-on, real-world experience while they’re a part of our engineering programme,’ said Burcu Akinci, head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Hamerschlag University professor at Carnegie Mellon University. ‘That’s why we’ve partnered with Gresham Smith to work together to advance solutions to some of our industry’s most pressing problems.’
As part of the agreement, Gresham Smith will also participate in recruitment and networking sessions with students from Carnegie Mellon.