E-news Online January 2012

In 2007, the British-based company Rolls-Royce announced plans to build a new jet engine manufacturing plant at Crosspointe, in Prince George County, Va., and invited the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Virginia State University and the Virginia Community College System to join it in an innovative partnership.

Partnership plans included creation of two major research centers; support for faculty, students, workforce development initiatives and research; and manufacturing training.

In support of the partnership, the Commonwealth of Virginia agreed to provide funds over a five-year period beginning in July 2009 to support chaired professorships, endowed graduate fellowships, endowed internships and lab renovations.

The partnership promised to provide significant educational and research opportunities for the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and so it has.

“Strategic goals for the Engineering School include a commitment to prepare our graduates for leadership, increase the impact of our research and expand the reach of the School. The Rolls-Royce partnership has had a positive impact on all of these areas,” said James H. Aylor, dean of the Engineering School.

Initiatives and achievements associated with the partnership include the following:

• The Rolls-Royce plant on the 1,000 acre Crosspointe Center aerospace manufacturing campus was completed in early 2011. It is the first of three plants planned for the complex and it will employ about 140 people. At full capacity, the plant will manufacture about 2,000 aircraft parts a year.

• Rolls-Royce is investing in research at the Commonwealth Center for Aerospace Propulsion Systems (CCAPS). The center is dedicated to advancing the boundaries of propulsion systems by exploring breakthrough concepts for creating more-efficient and more-effective propulsion systems. In the three years since it was created, CCAPS has gone from $0 funding to over $2 million in research funding from Rolls-Royce, the Commonwealth of Virginia and federal grants. The center is managed under the direction of U.Va. professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering Harsha Chelliah and Virginia Tech mechanical engineering professor Srinath Ekkad.

• Rolls-Royce provided 20 acres of land at Crosspointe for the home of the Commonwealth Center of Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM). This unique collaborative research facility will accelerate the transfer of laboratory innovations to manufacturing production lines. The 60,000-square-foot facility was designed jointly by CCAM member organizations. When completed in September 2012, it will offer research scientists and doctoral students from U.Va., Virginia Tech and Virginia State University a world-class facility to develop and test products for a diverse set of industries with a focus on surface engineering and manufacturing processes. Current member companies include Canon Virginia, Chromalloy, Newport News Shipbuilding, Rolls-Royce, Sandvik Coromant, Siemens and Aerojet.

• The University of Virginia provided support for eight faculty positions. The School has hired the following four faculty members, with four more to be hired over the next two years:
  
• Professor Eric Loth joined the mechanical and aerospace engineering department in 2010, where he serves as associate chair of aerospace engineering and conducts research on fluid dynamics with applications to aircraft, inlet and wind turbine aerodynamics as well as energy storage systems. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

• Associate Professor Beth Opila joined the materials science and engineering department in 2010, where her research focus is on ceramics used for the nose and wings of hypersonic aircraft that must endure ultra-high temperatures at Mach 5 and Mach 8 speeds. Prior to joining the Engineering School, she served 19 years with NASA and is a graduate of MIT.

• Assistant Professor Patrick Hopkins joined the mechanical and aerospace engineering department in fall 2011. His research focuses on thermal transport processes on the nanoscale. He previously held a prestigious Harry S. Truman Postdoctoral Fellowship at Sandia National Laboratories. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia.

• Assistant Professor Gary Koenig, Jr., joined the chemical engineering department this spring semester. His research interests are in the area of materials for energy storage, electrochemistry, composite materials, nanomaterials, colloid and interface science, complex fluids and soft materials. Before his arrival at U.Va., Koenig worked at the Argonne National Lab, where he conducted research in electrochemical energy storage. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin.

• The Commonwealth of Virginia will invest $7.6 million to fund three new endowed professorships in the Engineering School that will work together to develop curriculum and lead research efforts. Already, $6.3 million has been received, with the remainder expected in 2012. The Engineering School is currently recruiting for these positions.

• A doctoral student endowment was established with $1.5 million in funding from the Commonwealth, with $1 million more expected this year. The purpose of the graduate awards is to support outstanding Ph.D. students in pursuit of research and scholarship of interest to Rolls-Royce, the University of Virginia and other partners. Each fellow will receive a full commitment of $30,000 for tuition, fees, health care and $2,500 a year for travel, for a minimum of three years. The endowment will ultimately support a total of four graduate students a year. The first two will be announced this February.

• An undergraduate international internship endowment has been established with $500,000 from the Commonwealth, with an additional $500,000 to be received. Eventually four undergraduates a year will be supported by this endowment. The first two will be announced this semester.

• With $2 million in support from the Commonwealth, a Rapid-Prototyping Laboratory that includes a student collaborative design space as well as numerous 3-D printers and computer numerical controller (CNC) machines was constructed in the U.Va. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Building. Expansion of the Mechatronics Lab, under the direction of Assistant Professor Gavin Garner, was also made possible. These lab enhancements will enable students to study design concepts one semester and build out their creations during a subsequent semester.

• The Commonwealth provided $600,000, with an additional $400,000 coming in the next two years, for general faculty support. Among other activities that grew out of this funding is K–12 teacher training by Professor Larry Richards that uses Engineering Teaching Kits (ETKs).

• The Commonwealth provided $750,000, with an additional $500,000 to come, for sponsored research. Faculty supported by this funding include professors Haydn Wadley, Robert Kelly, Harsha Chelliah, Eric Loth and Randy Cogill.

“We were excited about the ways this partnership promised to benefit the Engineering School in 2007 and we are very pleased with what it has already made possible,” said James Aylor, dean of the Engineering School at U.Va. “It has fostered collaborations, provided critically needed support for research, faculty, graduate and undergraduate students and created an enhanced process for our students and faculty to move discovery from concept and design to product production.”

The partnership has had a significant impact on external research funding in the Engineering School, according to Professor and Senior Associate Dean Barry Johnson. “The Rolls-Royce partnership has enabled U.Va. to attract more than $8 million in external research funding for projects associated with the partnership. And CCAM has already generated more than $500,000 a year in funding for research under the direction of professors James Fitzerald, Peter Beling and Randy Cogill.”