OLD DOMINION TO LEAD MIT, OTHERS WITH $2 MILLION NASA GRANT
Old Dominion University recently received a $2 million NASA Langley Research Center grant, under which the university will lead a prestigious group of schools such as MIT and the University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana to enhance aerospace workforce training through a synergistic coupling of leading-edge technologies.
Ahmed K. Noor, director of Old Dominion's Center for Advanced Engineering Environments (CAEE) and professor of aerospace engineering, will lead the consortium of seven universities, which also includes Cornell, Syracuse and George Mason universities and the University of Florida. The consortium will be headquartered at CAEE, an enterprise center of Old Dominion's College of Engineering and Technology.
"Old Dominion University is delighted to extend its role in the area of aerospace and modeling and simulation in collaboration with NASA," said President Roseann Runte. "This is important, ground-breaking work that will provide the basis for future developments in research and teaching. We are proud to partner with NASA and the consortium universities. Together we can share available resources to expand the horizons of the possible."
According to Noor, the aerospace industry faces a shortage of qualified workers with adequate skills, which current education and training doesn't address because it is fragmented and concentrates on near-term product development.
The consortium will utilize a variety of technologies to develop advanced and unique learning systems that will link NASA, other government agencies, universities and industry and technology providers in a network.
By using high-productivity computing, modeling and simulation, interrogative visualization, intelligent human/computer interfaces, high-capacity communications, networking and information technologies, among others, the group will be able to conduct research and teach courses without the constrictions of geography. The group will develop novel learning paradigms, including multi-university group-teaching courses in revolutionary technology areas, advanced learning modules and prototypes of learning networks. It will also ensure the rapid transfer of the research results to industry.
"This network will stimulate critical thinking and intelligent growth and promote intermingling among emerging and traditional engineering and science disciplines," Noor said. "It will create a new generation of engineers who can work across disciplines and perform in rapidly changing environments. It will also enable collective intelligence, innovation and creativity to bear on the increasing complexity of future aerospace systems."