The Center for Advanced Energy Systems (CAES) was established by Rutgers University under the supervision of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department. It is a multi‐disciplined, full service center including thrusts in research, teaching, and outreach in response to fertile opportunities for important advances in technology and significant student interest. While not typical of university‐based centers, the success we have experienced shows that initiatives such as ours can be an important part of the portfolio of activities at major research universities serving to ground researchers in the world of reality and allowing for a new way of approaching problems.