After a 38-year engineering career, Neil Quellhorst’s retirement years aren’t being lived on the golf course. He was recently hired by MERGE, a collaborative design and prototype lab geared toward entrepreneurs in tech fields, to serve as engineering prototype director.

In his long career beginning with a series of small, entrepreneurial companies, then with Honeywell and later Rockwell Collins, Quellhorst designed large-scale electrical equipment such cell phone systems, avionics and public safety radios that are used by millions of people every day. Since his retirement and before joining MERGE, Quellhorst taught courses as an adjunct lecturer at the Henry B. Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. He holds engineering degrees from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, the Illinois Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Henry B. Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa.

Over the course of his career, the Ohio-native worked all over the world, but found that Iowa has a “sticky” quality. 

“Something about Iowa makes you want to stay and invest in the community and yourself simultaneously,” said Quellhorst. “MERGE is a space to help entrepreneurial Iowans bring life-enhancing biomedical devices and electronic prototypes from conception to reality, and I’m honored to be part of it.”

MERGE is a collaborative project involving the University of Iowa Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, the City of Iowa City and the Iowa City Area Development Group. Its goal is to bring together a diverse group of community members with expertise in business, engineering, design, and law as a “creative factory” to code, prototype and build tech companies that ultimately enhance the Iowa economy. 

In his new role as engineering prototype director, Quellhorst will set up, maintain and train local entrepreneurs on state-of-the-art rapid-prototyping fabrication equipment in protostudios, the prototyping center within MERGE.

“My alternative title is shop teacher,” Quellhorst quips.

He will work alongside Chuck Romans, MERGE Engineering Prototype Director, whose design expertise will insure MERGE-developed biomedical and electronic products are both functional and beautiful.

“Though Neil and I come from different backgrounds and expertise in product development, we implement prototyping practices that fundamentally complement each other,” said Romans. “Our mission is to assist in the creation of functional products that are visually and ergonomically attractive with the use of good design principles. I see us as a tag team in the use of design practices that will clearly differentiate us from other prototyping hubs.”

MERGE recently received a $1.5 million grant from the Iowa Economic Development Authority and $800,000 in federal funding from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration. Bids for renovations on the 14,000 square foot downtown space in the Iowa City Public Library are going out shortly with construction to begin in October and with an opening expected in spring 2017.

The Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development provides resources and support to researchers and scholars at the University of Iowa and to businesses across Iowa with the goal of forging new frontiers of discovery and innovation and promoting a culture of creativity that benefits the campus, the state, and the world. More at http://research.uiowa.edu, and on Twitter: @DaretoDiscover.