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Protolabs to Support MIT Research on Defense, Medical Innovation Scaling

By NAM NewsroomSeptember 9, 2026

Digital manufacturing services company Protolabs will fund research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the development and adoption of innovations in manufacturing (Today’s Medical Developments).

What’s going on: Funding from the Minnesota-based firm will go to MIT’s Industrial Performance Center to “study leading U.S. manufacturing innovators and identify what it takes to scale the nation’s most advanced technologies,” particularly in the U.S. aerospace and medical sectors.

  • The grant will support the center’s development of a manufacturing innovation index, a groundbreaking project that will “measure the changing market for manufactured goods.”
  • It will also enable MIT to continue its Initiative for New Manufacturing, which researches high-growth businesses.

Why it’s important: “Protolabs pioneered rapid product development through the use of technology-enabled software and needs to focus now more than ever on developing and deploying physical AI to scale up the American manufacturing and supply chain ecosystem,” Protolabs President and CEO Suresh Krishna said.

The last word: “When we visited Protolabs this spring, we saw a showcase of the potential for [how] good software—coupled with process redesign decisions—can enable a high-mix, low-volume machine shop [to] move faster and more flexibly,” the MIT IPC wrote in a social media post announcing Protolabs’ support.

  • “We also discovered a shared interest in understanding how to scale the production of new technologies in the U.S. That’s what this new research sets out to do.”

Related: In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Protolabs President and CEO Suresh Krishna highlighted the NAM’s “critical role” in promoting both large and small manufacturers and helping to strengthen American supply chains, saying he was “very proud” of his partnership with NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons. “We need the policies that the NAM is advocating for to help our supply chains rapidly scale up,” he concluded.