Northeastern University has joined the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT), a pioneering consortium of teaching hospitals, research laboratories, and engineering schools in the Boston area. Northeastern’s excellence in use-inspired research across multiple areas of scientific discovery will advance the consortium’s mission to make a profound impact on grand challenges in health care through engineering solutions.

“The greatest innovations are born from the collaboration of scientific discovery, technological breakthrough and commercial implementation,” said Northeastern University President Joseph E. Aoun, who is joining CIMIT’s executive committee. “Northeastern’s ambitious research portfolio in areas of health, nanotechnology and engineering will be critical to the success of the innovations created by this partnership.”

Tapping into Northeastern’s interdisciplinary research strengths, including nanomedicine, sensing and imaging, neuroinformatics, healthcare systems engineering, and robotics, the collaboration builds upon the University’s research priorities that lead to breakthroughs in health, security and sustainability. Most recently, Northeastern has been designated as a Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence by the National Cancer Institute.

CIMIT acts as an infrastructure to enable inter-institutional collaboration between scientists, engineers and clinicians, and helps fund early-stage, high-risk ideas in the first phase of innovation. Through this membership, Northeastern will build upon its robust network of existing clinical partnerships by forging new collaborations in translational research. In addition, the partnership will present new opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students in areas such as co-op, research, and the capstone program.

“Northeastern University brings additional excellence in biomedical engineering into the consortium,” said John A. Parrish, M.D., executive director and chief executive officer of CIMIT. “This opportunity to collaborate more closely with research faculty at Northeastern offers additional state-of-the-art technology and engineering research resources for clinically-based innovators in the Boston area. In the years ahead, we look forward to working with many Northeastern scientists and engineers as we pursue our shared goal of finding novel solutions to improve patient care.”

Northeastern joins CIMIT’s other consortium members: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, Boston University, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Boston, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Partners HealthCare, and VA Boston Healthcare System.