The Milwaukee Institute, founded in 2007, is a non-profit (501c3) research organization. The Institute provides shared collaboration and technical computing systems (communications, high performance computers, data storage and software) and associated technical services required to solve many complex problems in research and development. These problems are of interest to public-private partnerships formed from regional .edu, .com and .gov organizations.

Through scale economics, this shared cyberinfrastructure (the Milwaukee Metropolitan Grid, or "MGrid") efficiently fosters, enables and enhances economic and workforce development initiatives dependent on advanced information technology.  As such, the MGrid supports high technology business formation and expansion by entrepreneurs and small, medium and large organizations concerned with the real-time monitoring, analysis, design and management of complex natural and synthetic processes - processes found in healthcare, manufacturing, transportation and logistics, financial services, media and design, and public safety domains.