Relationships between businesses and the University used to be coordinated by individual schools and fundraising staffs. But that's changing with the creation of the Business Engagement Center, a new office set up to solicit and coordinate corporate involvement with the University.

The BEC moved into permanent offices on South University Avenue Wednesday, where staff will work to attract speakers, research contracts and corporate gifts to the University. Daryl Weinert, the center's executive director, said the staff is now poised to undertake what he calls "an elaborate matchmaking project."

Weinert's staff of "relationship managers" will help businesses find faculty experts, researchers and licensing opportunities. Weinert said he hopes the new model will bring the University a drastic increase in revenue from businesses.

When the College of Engineering implemented a similar program six years ago, revenue from corporate partnerships and donations rose by about 75 percent, said Weinert. Weinert, who is also the director of corporate relations for the College of Engineering, said he hopes the BEC sparks an increase that will "approach that same level."

The Office of Development has traditionally run all of the University's interactions with businesses, but Weinert said that was limiting because staff focused almost exclusively on soliciting donations.

"There's so much more industry can do for us and also we can do for them," he said.

The BEC grew from recommendations made by a committee formed about two years ago by Stephen Forrest, the vice president for research at the University. Committee members decided they wanted to create a hub for coordinating business relations at the University, said Ken Nisbet, the committee's co-chair and director of the Office of Technology Transfer.

OTT moved from Wolverine Tower to share space with the BEC in the Galleria building above Starbuck's on South University. He said the OTT, which works to commercialize University researchers' inventions, interacts with about 100 companies and helps create eight to 10 new ones each year. He expects many of those to become clients of the BEC, and it to in turn provide new clients for the OTT.

"We're calling it University of Michigan at Galleria," Nisbet said. "We want it to be a hub for companies looking to engage with the University."