NOT 'financial' engineering

From NYT...
"General Electric will build a research center that could bring more than 1,100 jobs to Michigan, the company announced Friday. The center, called the Advanced Manufacturing and Software Technology Center, will be about 25 miles outside Detroit in Van Buren Township. G.E.’s plan is to hire engineers and scientists in the region who have been put out of work by the shrinkage in the auto industry. G.E. said that it would invest about $100 million to build the site and that it would benefit from more than $60 million in state incentives over 12 years. “We’ve found the state of Michigan to be aggressive and a good partner,” G.E.’s chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, said at a news conference with Governor Jennifer Granholm in Birmingham, Mich. “We view this as a long-term commitment. We’ve looked at this downturn as a way to launch more investment faster.” The center will include renewable energy components like wind turbines, said Mr. Immelt, who is on President Obama’s board of economic advisers. G.E. is the biggest United States maker of wind turbines. Existing space on the site will be used to develop software and health care information technology, G.E. said..."

Given the incentives GE is not putting much at risk, but it is a good start. This project will need engineers- the mechanical, chemical and electrical kind, not the financial ones who brought a lot of grief to GE.