University of Illinois Opens Beer Lab in School's Research Park

The University of Illinois (UI) at Urbana-Champaign has its own beer research lab, but is has nothing to do with brewing or tasting, the East Central Illinois News-Gazette reported.

Anheuser-Busch InBev said the "Bud Lab," of UI's Research Park, is a data analytics center that will tackle issues like social media, assortment optimization and large-scale data initiatives.

Rafael Pinterich, the lab's director, will choose and oversee the projects and will also work closely with student interns. He said the four interns currently working at the lab are working on two key issues: social media data analysis and service optimization to drive sales.

"We are already in the recruiting process for the fall semester, and we'll also be present at the engineering and business career fairs to speak with students about future opportunities," Pinterich said.

He said he plans on hiring more student interns as he prepares to add more project diversity. The current interns come from statistics and industrial engineering backgrounds. Pinterich said he hopes to add projects in marketing, promotion strategy, market trends and price analysis.

Laura Frerichs, Director of UI's Research Park, told Fox Chicago the interns would be paid and would work alongside full time AB InBev employees. She also said the lab is strictly for crunching numbers.

"It's not a beer testing lab. It's a data analytics lab. But it happens to be on a pretty cool brand," Frerichs said. "They're looking for better data scientists to be able to use that data and make decisions from it. The University of Illinois is renowned for engineering and computer science, and they've joined us here on campus to employ students and recent grads to help them work on market research problems."

UI recently placed third on the Princeton Reviews list of top party schools, but Frerichs emphasized the research-only aspect of the lab.

"Of course we're trying to be careful about anything that would give a perception of condoning underage drinking, which is not the intention of this center," she said.