The University of Chicago is creating its first new school in 31 years, adding the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering with $75 million in new funding from the Pritzker Foundation.

The university, which hasn't had an engineering school until now, said the school will be the first of its kind in the U.S., taking an interdisciplinary approach to the engineering field with a focus on research and development starting at one of the smallest levels of science, the molecule.

It will become the seventh of the university's schools, which include the Booth School of Business and the Pritzker School of Medicine.

The new school will grow out of the university’s Institute for Molecular Engineering and continue the institute's ties with Argonne National Laboratory. It will offer undergraduate, graduate and doctorate degrees, with research in quantum engineering, biotechnology, immuno-engineering, advanced materials, energy storage and clean water, among other things. It will also work with the school's Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, with an eye to "rapidly commercialize technologies," according to a statement. The university's scientists and engineers in the field have already launched six companies, it said.

"Rather than focusing on traditional engineering specialties, the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering is organized around pressing societal challenges, including cancer research, energy storage and global water scarcity," the statement said.

“We did not set out to build and replicate the model of the standard engineering school—that was not our goal to begin with, and it remains not our goal,” University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer said in an interview.

The new school will focus on science, engineering and technology development efforts that take a molecular-level-up approach to addressing major societal issues like questions related to clean water and energy storage. Zimmer hopes that research by the school on such fronts can put Chicago at the center of advances in those areas.

"We believe that there are emerging technologies that we are working on that have the potential to make the Chicago region the center of the development of these technologies nationwide,” he said.