Industrial Partnerships

CAMM has established a scheme of industrial partnerships with a group of companies involved in the various aspects of materials development, from metal suppliers, metal working through component manufacturing in both the aerospace and automotive sectors. Many companies have participated in the partnership scheme, including Alcan, Allegheny Teledyne, Brush Wellman, Ford Motor Company, Reference Metals, FEI, GE Aircraft Engines, Honda, Howmet, Ladish, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, MTS Nanoinstruments, Pechiney, Rolls Royce, TIMET, and UES. These industrial partnerships are based on two aims, the first to maximize the transfer of knowledge between CAMM and industry, and the second is to provide our students with a useful industrial experience. Also, by taking the knowledge and computational models developed under federal and state funding and applying them to industrially relevant problems provides a very efficient and effective means of leveraging the output of CAMM to industry.

The scheme is underscored by the sponsorship of a graduate student by each industry partner at a cost of $50,000/year, provided to CAMM. These funds are used to support the stipend of a specific graduate student who will team with the sponsoring partner. The aim is to use as much of the grant as necessary to attract a high quality student, preferably domestic (i.e., by offering enhanced stipends for exceptional students). The partnering company, by nominating one of its engineers/technologists to act as a mentor, will be directly involved in the work and development of these graduate students. These industry-supported graduate students will spend summers, or other periods as convenient, at their sponsoring company under the mentor’s supervision. The specific topics to be studied will be selected based on input from industry and CAMM’s investigators. For example, one might be the development of microstructurally-based models for forging of Ti alloys (appealing to the aerospace partners) and another the prediction of microstructural development in cast Al alloys (relevant to the automotive partners).
A scheme of partnership, similar to that described above for industry, is planned between some National Laboratories and CAMM. Thus, partnerships have been established between CAMM and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (KAPL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Generally, these partnerships will involve sponsorship of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, working on technological problems relevant to the partnering laboratory, with the students performing research at both CAMM locations and the National Laboratories. The same interactions as those described above for industry, with the attendant advantages for both the universities and National Laboratories, are anticipated.