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Pvilion Millenials Make Their Mark in Manufacturing

BROOKLYN, NY/ JULY 2, 2020 – Pvilion continues to shine as the place for millennials to work as FuzeHub awards its employees for the second consecutive year. Ask a random group of people where millennials are being drawn to work and a majority might answer Silicon Valley or rattle off names of companies like Facebook and Google, but small and medium sized manufacturing companies like Brooklyn, NY based Pvilion, which designs, builds and deploys flexible photovoltaic (PV) structures, are proving surprisingly attractive to millennials as places to work. In turn, these millennials are breathing new life into American manufacturing, an industry long viewed as in decline and described pejoratively as rusted as plants closed and jobs were lost or relocated abroad.

Pvilion’s Co-Founder and CEO Colin Touhey, himself a millennial, is an electrical engineer with a focus on renewable energy technology, He has worked in wind, solar, and ocean energy, receiving grants from NASA and NYSERDA. New technologies and his desire to apply them to the production of solar fabric related products drew him to manufacturing. In founding Pvilion, Toughey has been in the forefront of highly educated, and skilled engineers, designers, and architects that are now working in the manufacturing industry.

Millennials, like Touhey, are in the vanguard of resurgence in American manufacturing and last year Touhey’s contribution was recognized by FuzeHub, an organization dedicated to championing small to medium manufacturing across New York State, when he was named a recipient of its 2019 Millennials in Manufacturing Award.

FuzeHub launched its Millennials in Manufacturing Award to recognize the young professionals leading the renaissance in manufacturing across New York State. New York’s small and mid-sized manufacturing industry realizes it must adapt new technologies to be competitive and to continue to grow. These changes can and are being driven by the young people who immerse themselves in these new technologies.

This year FuzeHub again recognized Pvilion as the place where millennials want to be, when it named not one, but two Pvilion employees, Udok Eze, 24, and Zhiheng, “Zach” Wu, 26, among the winners of its 2020 Millennials in Manufacturing Award.

Udok Eze grew up in Lewisburg, PA, but now lives in Brooklyn. He became interested in engineering at a young age. With his parent’s encouragement, he studied hard, applied to and was accepted to Cornell, receiving a degree in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in solid mechanics of tensile structures. Eze says he was drawn to Pvilion by its vertical business structure, “I love contributing to each phase of Pvilion’s process: client collaboration, fabrication, product delivery and design. I genuinely love being a part of the Pvilion family.”

Zach Wu also resides in Brooklyn, but he calls China home. Zach is an architect at Pvilion and works very closely with Todd Dalland, Pvilion’s Co-Founder, President, and an award-winning architect himself. Zach attended Tsinghua University, Beijing, China where he received a degree in architecture. He then decided to continue his studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, from where he received a Master of Fine Arts/Interior Design.

“Without young, highly motivated people like Udok and Zack, without there innovative thinking, Pvilion could not compete,” Robert Lerner, AIA, a Pvilion’s Co-Founder and Vice President, says. “It is their talents and work ethic that make Pvilion successful.”