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MEAM/GRASP/PRECISE Seminar: Gary Fedder, Carnegie Mellon University, “Advanced Manufacturing Institutes – A $2B National Experiment in Government-Industry-University Private-Public Partnerships”

March 22, 2013 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Abstract: While the United States is a leading manufacturer in the
world, our nation has been losing manufacturing jobs to overseas
operations for the last three decades. This trend accelerated after
2000. Revitalizing our manufacturing sector is important for three
compelling reasons: manufacturing provides high paying jobs that spawn
service-sector jobs, product innovation is facilitated by co-location
of design and production processes, and domestic manufacturing
capability is vital to national security*. To address these concerns,
in March 2012, President Obama announced a national initiative to
create up to 15 institutes for advanced manufacturing as part of the
National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI). Through a swift
competition and selection process, a pilot institute for NNMI, called
the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, was awarded
in August 2012 with the winning team centered in the Ohio,
Pennsylvania and West Virginia region. Competitions for three more
NNMI institutes are forecast for this year. The NAMII and the NNMI
institutes are instances of unique government-industry-university
private-public partnerships that amount to an interesting national
experiment to address the gap in R&D activities between applied
research and productization. I will walk through the events leading to
these national manufacturing initiatives, draw on some lessons already
learned, and point to future opportunities for advanced manufacturing
R&D. I will also describe a unique program, called Research for
Advanced Manufacturing in Pennsylvania (RAMP) and led by Carnegie
Mellon and Lehigh University, which seeds university R&D projects that
are driven by industry needs.

* Report the President on Ensuring American Leadership in Advanced
Manufacturing, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Presenter

- Learn More

Gary K. Fedder is the Director of the Institute for Complex
Engineered Systems (ICES), the Howard M. Wilkoff Professor of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Professor of The Robotics
Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He also holds courtesy
appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and
Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon.

Dr. Fedder earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in EECS from MIT in 1982
and 1984, respectively, and obtained the Ph.D. degree from the
University of California at Berkeley in 1994. His personal research
interests include microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) modeling and
fabrication, integration of MEMS and CMOS, physical sensor design,
nonlinear dynamics of MEMS, RF MEMS, gas chemical microsensors and
implantable biosensors. He is an IEEE Fellow and has contributed to
over 200 research publications and holds several patents in the MEMS
area.

As Director of ICES, Professor Fedder leads the institute’s mission to
act as a catalyst to identify, seed and grow new areas of
multidisciplinary research in complex engineered materials, devices,
processes and systems. Professor Fedder is co-director in
collaboration with Lehigh University on two R&D programs funded
through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and
Economic Development. The RAMP (Research on Advanced Manufacturing in
Pennsylvania) program provides incentive to academic researchers to
collaborate with PA industry partners in translational R&D in advanced
manufacturing. The PITA (Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology
Alliance) program provides funding for early-stage R&D for products
and processes of interest to PA companies.

From 2011 to 2012, Professor Fedder served as a technical co-lead in
the policy subcommittee of the U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Partnership
setup by President Obama. He worked with colleagues from industry and
academia to generate recommendations that motivated the spring 2012
announcement of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation
(NNMI). Professor Fedder helped lead a team from the Pennsylvania,
Ohio and West Virginia “Tech Belt” region to win the pilot institute
for the NNMI called the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation
Institute (NAMII).

Details

Date:
March 22, 2013
Time:
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Event Category:

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