It is well known that research universities provide fertile ground for interdisciplinary work between science, engineering, design and other fields. Specifically, in industrial design, faculty and students have the opportunity to translate new discoveries and technologies into useful inventions- for both societal impact and commercial benefit. To date, a great deal has been written about the innovative output and educational value of interdisciplinary collaboration, leveraging applied research, problem solving (McDermott, Boradkar & Zunjarward 2014) and campus entrepreneurship (Etzkowitz, 2000). But, there is also growing evidence that industrial design faculty and students can form worthwhile partnerships with scientific research as well, to help develop new technology earlier in the innovation pipeline: through producing lab test mockups, envisioning product applications of discoveries and in helping define research goals early on (Driver, Peralta & Moultrie 2011). Distinct in many ways from the kind of professional industrial design work conducted in the private sector, this “lab-integrated industrial design,” for lack of an established term, also provides unique student learning experiences: namely, the industrial design student can be completely integrated from day one in a research program rather than serving a more traditional “translational” role after the fact. For this educational reason along with significant design research output potential, such collaborative, interdisciplinary partnerships with scientific research should not be overlooked, especially in universities with direct access to advanced scientific activity. To demonstrate more specifically what these partnerships can look like, this paper presents a case study of an ongoing, fully integrated lab-to-product development partnership involving the creation of a novel fog harvesting device called “Fog Harp.” The invention of Fog Harp was a direct outcome of a close relationship between Professors Brook Kennedy in the department of Industrial Design (ID) and Dr. Jonathan Boreyko in the department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics (BEAM) at Virginia Tech. Thus far, eight industrial design students have been able to work on the project from the outset which has enabled three of them to be deeply involved in developing an alpha version of the device. As a result, they have been able to witness the invention process first hand and have been named co-inventors on patent applications and co-authors in scientific publications.