Research Triangle Institute, operating as RTI International, is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, United States. RTI provides research and technical services. It was founded in 1958 with $500,000 in funding from local businesses and the three North Carolina universities that form the Research Triangle. RTI research has covered topics like HIV/AIDS, healthcare, education curriculum and the environment.
History
In 1954, a building contractor met with the North Carolina state treasurer and the president of Wachovia to discuss building a research park in North Carolina to attract new industries to the region. They obtained support for the concept from the state governor, Luther Hodges, and the three universities that form the research triangle: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University and North Carolina State University. The Research Triangle Institute (now RTI International) was formed by the park's founders as the research park's first tenant in 1958. The following January, they announced that $1.425 million had been raised by the Research Triangle Foundation to fund the park and that $500,000 of it had been set aside for RTI International. RTI started with three divisions: Isotope Development, Operational Sciences and Statistics Research. Its first contract was a $4,500 statistical study of morbidity data from Tennessee. In RTI's first year of operation, it had 25 staff and $240,000 in research contracts. Its early work was focused on statistics, but within a few years RTI expanded into radioisotopes, organic chemistry and polymers. In 1960, the institute had its first international research contract for an agricultural census in Nigeria. RTI won contracts with the Department of Education, Defense Department, NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission, growing to $3.4 million in contracts in 1964 and $85 million in 1988. In 1971, RTI's staff of 430 was reorganized into four research groups: social and economic systems, statistical sciences, environmental sciences and engineering, and chemistry and life sciences. It also created a division for education called the Center for Education Research and Evaluation. Four years later, RTI created the Office for International Programs to manage international projects. RTI provided funding assistance to help found the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in 1980. Two years later, it was part of a joint venture to create Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC), a non-profit whose computer network connected local K-12 schools. RTI has had five presidents:
George R. Herbert 1958 - 1988 Thomas Wooten 1988 - 1998 Victoria Franchetti Haynes 1998 - 2012 Wayne Holden 2012 - 2022 Tim J. Gabel 2022–Present
Organization RTI International is a non-profit research organization. It was initially established by three local universities but it is managed by a separate board and management team. RTI's structure consists of members of the corporation, the board of governors and corporate officers. The members of the corporation elect governors, who in turn create the organization's policies. RTI also has a separate business called RTI Health Solutions, which supports biotech, diagnostic and medical device companies. In 2012, the organization's largest service areas were in social, statistical and environmental sciences. More than half of RTI's staff have advanced degrees in one of 120 fields and work on approximately 1,200 projects at a time.
Projects
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