About Us

The Center was founded in 2012 through generous contributions from UTEP alumnus Mike Loya. It connects the College of Business Administration and the College of Engineering. The Mike Loya Center for Innovation and Commerce (MLCIC) is committed to engage faculty and student led research at the intersection of business administration and engineering. The MLCIC’s core objective is to bring faculty and students from business and engineering together in a learning and research environment in order to discover, develop, and deploy innovations to the world of commerce. In so doing, the MLCIC will both increase the probability that bench and laboratory research translates to the marketplace and that innovations in enterprise processes, procedures, contracts, and market innovations will lead to value creation.

The center’s core values focus mainly in supporting and facilitating multidisciplinary collaborative research to discover unique solutions to business and technology challenges that are present in today’s global markets. At the center students are infused with a high sense of commitment to their community, a culture of teamwork and collaboration, and the custom to always strive for excellence. All these practices, coupled with innovative educational programs, allow the Mike Loya Center to empower UTEP students and faculty to be more successful throughout their professional lives, and contribute to the university’s objective of serving as one of the major economic engines in the Paso del Norte region.