PROVIDENCE – The establishment, by the University of Rhode Island and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, of a national Center of Excellence for Undersea Technologies will be celebrated this Thursday with a 10 a.m. State House ceremony.

Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and U.S. Representatives Patrick J. Kennedy and James R. Langevin are to join Robert L. Carothers, president of URI; Donald A. Aker, technical operations manager at NUWC, Division Newport; and Saul Kaplan, executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, as they announce details of the program.

More than a dozen other university and industry partners will join URI, NUWC and the R.I. EDC in pursuing the center’s mission, according to a statement today from URI.

The alliance will focus on cooperative research, technology transfer, product development, and science and technology training and education, NUWC said in a Feb. 12 statement (READ MORE), with the goals of both fostering new naval undersea technologies and working to identify civilian applications for the emerging techologies.

A partnership agreement was signed in January, NUWC said.