This past year, the university launched a number of noteworthy new partnerships with the state of Maryland and with public institutions across the state.

In 2014, the Maryland General Assembly enacted into law the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative Program, through which the state will provide $50 million in matching funds over six years to support chairs and professorships across the state of Maryland in basic and applied scientific research. The recipient is required to hold a joint or secondary appointment at another in-state university, to work in support of a federal laboratory, or to support entrepreneurial activities at a private company.

E-Nnovation sits alongside another new public-private partnership, the Maryland Advanced Research Computing Center, a facility set to open shortly at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and that features a supercomputer with a 20-petabyte storage capacity. This $30 million project is funded by the state of Maryland, and is being managed in collaboration with Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland.

This past year, the university announced another collaboration, the Extreme Science Internships program, which places high-achieving science and engineering students from Morgan State University in research internships at Johns Hopkins and other universities. The five-year, $500,000 program was funded by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory through the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute; three of these students started at HEMI this past summer.

These different initiatives all share a common thread—they reflect our deepening ties with a broader set of public stakeholders in Maryland, with the shared aspiration of advancing our common missions of discovery, education, and betterment of the communities around us.