IIT Research Institute

IIT Research Institute (IITRI), also known historically and interchangeably as IIT Research Center, is a high-technology scientific research organization and applied research laboratory located in Chicago, Illinois. Previously known as the Armour Research Foundation, the IITRI is an independent corporation that operates collaboratively with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and the U.S. Government.

IITRI was formed in 1936 as the Armour Research Foundation (ARF), and was renamed IITRI in 1963. Initially, ARF was formed to support the research endeavors of faculty members from the Armour Institute of Technology, predecessor to the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).

IITRI is headquartered on the IIT campus in Chicago, but operates as an independent, not-for-profit research organization. Between its founding in 1936 and 2000, IITRI developed research operations in approximately two dozen locations across the United States. The IITRI staff grew to approximately 1700 employees who performed research and development programs with an annual research budget exceeding $200 M per year. Historically, as a major national science research center, work involved both unclassified and classified (secret) research.

In 2002, IITRI became entirely focused on the life sciences. All other science and engineering divisions were spun off into Alion Science and Technology, a separate employee-owned corporation. Since 2002, research at IITRI has been entirely focused on biomedical research, with particular emphasis on pre-clinical toxicology, safety evaluations, and drug discovery and development.

In 2006, IITRI formed Technology Research, Inc. (TRI), as a wholly owned subsidiary in which research programs that fall outside of IITRI's not-for-profit charter can be conducted.

Research and development programs explored as an engineering think tank over the decades have involved many areas of science, including applied physics, high energy physics, upper atmosphere research (aeronomy), nuclear physics, nuclear attack survival, numerical and computer simulations, electron microscopes and microscopy, police technologies, military, luminescence, aerosols, spacecraft thermal protective coatings, material effects by solar radiation, energy work, and mining engineering. The invention of the modern cellphone was developed here. Early research into magnetics here would cause the development of early wire recorders (fostering modern tape recording), and later the new field of computer science.