Ohio Workshop Seeks Ideas For Manufacturing Innovation Network

David E. Steitz

Headquarters, Washington                                   

202-358-1730

david.steitz@nasa.gov

 

Lori Rachul

Glenn Research Center, Cleveland

216-433-8806

lori.j.rachul@nasa.gov

 

Mark Bello

National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Md.

301-975-3776

mark.bello@nist.gov

 

WASHINGTON -- NASA and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) are sponsoring the second in a series of regional public workshops to gather ideas and suggestions on the design of the proposed National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI). The workshop will be held July 9 at the Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland.

"Designing for Impact II: Workshop on Building the NNMI" is a partnership between the interagency Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office in Gaithersburg, Md., and local Cleveland organizations that include NASA's Glenn Research Center, Cuyahoga Community College and Case Western Reserve University. Confirmed workshop speakers are NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, NIST Director Patrick Gallagher and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. Invited speakers include congressional, state and local leaders.

Conceived to address strategic gaps in U.S. manufacturing innovation, the NNMI is envisioned as a network of up to 15 regional hubs -- Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation -- that will connect research discoveries and budding ideas for tomorrow's technologies and products with current U.S. manufacturers and startup firms of tomorrow. The network is proposed as a public and private collaboration in the President's FY 2013 budget.

These regional collaborations will bring together industry, universities and community colleges, federal agencies and states to accelerate innovation by investing in industrially relevant manufacturing technologies with broad applications. They also will support education and training of an advanced manufacturing work force.

Workshop participants will learn about the principles and concepts behind the NNMI and participate in interactive sessions designed to solicit ideas on how best to structure the network and the institutes.

Facilitated interactive discussions will focus on four areas key to the success of the institutes:

-- Technologies with broad impact

-- Institute structure and governance

-- Strategies for sustainable institute operations

-- Education and work force development

This event builds on the first regional workshop on designing and building the innovation network, held in Troy, N.Y., April 25. In addition, the Ohio workshop will explore manufacturing-related interests and needs specific to the region.

The workshops are organized by the newly created interagency Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office, which is charged with coordinating federal resources and programs to enhance technology transfer to U.S. manufacturers. The workshops are hosted by NIST. Core partner agencies include NASA, the Department of Defense, Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

The workshop will be held at Corporate College East, which is part of Cuyahoga Community College. Advance sign-up is required. Registration closes July 2. Attendees are charged a fee to cover food and beverage expenses. Space is limited and event sign-up will be on a first-come, first-served basis, with no more than four representatives from the same organization. For more details on the workshop and to sign up for the event, visit http://manufacturing.gov/amp/event_070912.html.

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit

http://www.nasa.gov.

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National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Overview

WATCH Series

June 21, 2012 12:00 PM  to

June 21, 2012 1:00 PM

Room 110, NSF

Abstract

A brief history, along with present and future plans for this national initiative will be covered, followed by a Q&A period.

Speaker

In early 2010 the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was selected as the lead agency for the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) and they identified Dr. McDuffie to be the Lead for this effort and has now completed his transition to this new position. In his previous position he had been appointed the Associate Director of the National Coordination Office (NCO) for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) in February 2008. From early September 2009 until early November 2009 he served as Acting Director of the NCO. His appointment as the Associate Director of the NCO comes after joining the NIST as a Computer Scientist in their Information Technology Laboratory, Office of Federal and Industrial Relations. In August 2006, Dr. McDuffie joined the NCO where he served as the Technical Coordinator for the Cyber Security and Information Assurance (CSIA) Interagency Working Group (IWG), Federal Agency Administration of Science and Technology Education and Research (FASTER) Committee of Practice (CoP), and the Software Design and Productivity (SDP) Coordination Group (CG).

Prior to joining the NCO, Dr. McDuffie served as the Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) - Science and Technology for America's Readiness (N-STAR) Initiative. He served as the Lead Program Director for the Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS) Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF).

He served as an Assistant Professor at Florida State University in the Department of Computer Science where he taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in CS for seven years. Dr. McDuffie has participated in software engineering projects for the U.S. Air Force, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Federal Aviation Administration, Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the National Security Agency.

Dr. McDuffie received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida.

Meeting Type

Lecture

Contacts

 Keith Marzullo, (703) 292-8950 kmarzull@nsf.gov

NSF Related Organizations

 Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering

ONR Researcher Tapped for Role in National Materials Genome Initiative

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy  (OSTP) has selected an Office of Naval Research  (ONR) director to serve as co-deputy chair of an interagency subcommittee tasked with speeding the advancement of new materials.

Dr. Julie Christodoulou, division director of naval materials in ONR’s Sea Warfare and Weapons  department, became one of three co-deputy chairs of the National Science and Technology Council’s Subcommittee for the Materials Genome Initiative. The subcommittee is supporting the Materials Genome Initiative for Global Competitiveness  (MGI), part of President Obama’s plan  to accelerate the standard decades-long process to discover, mature and manufacture new materials.

Just as the Human Genome Project  rejuvenated and spurred the growth of biological sciences by decoding the fundamental building blocks of human genetics, MGI is a national effort to build a materials innovation infrastructure that will accelerate the discovery and incorporation of materials in half the time and at a reduced cost of traditional approaches.

It took nearly 40 years for lithium-ion batteries to go from material discovery and development to mass market consumption.

With investment in the MGI, officials aim to gain efficiency in the scientific discovery process and accelerate commercial adaptation. Scientists supporting the initiative will advance computational tools that encourage collaboration throughout the development, certification, implementation and manufacturing processes of new materials, which will also shorten the transition time into commercial products.

“The purpose is to advance our experimental and computational tools, and to establish data-sharing protocols and ways of working together,” said Christodoulou. “That’s what all of this is about—trying to seed that infrastructure so that people have a way to work in this collaborative environment, which we believe is really going to make a difference in the world of materials science.”

Christodoulou will help oversee the effort with her co-deputy chairs, Dr. Charles Ward of the Air Force Research Laboratory  and Dr. Ian Robertson of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Dr. Cyrus Wadia, who is OSTP’s assistant director for clean energy and materials research and development, is the subcommittee chairman.

Federal agencies participating in the initiative include the departments of energy, commerce and defense; the National Institute of Standards and Technology; NSF; and NASA .

ONR has been at the forefront of funding basic research to help scientists discover, improve and incorporate new materials. The MGI will assist in focusing national attention, allowing the collective harnessing of similar but disparate interests, ultimately leading to more rapid advancement of materials for national security needs.

JILA Team Demonstrates 'A New Way of Lasing': A 'Superradiant' Laser

BOULDER, Colo. – Physicists at JILA have demonstrated a novel “superradiant” laser design, which has the potential to be 100 to 1,000 times more stable than the best conventional visible lasers. This type of laser could boost the performance of the most advanced atomic clocks and related technologies, such as communications and navigation systems as well as space-based astronomical instruments.

Described in the April 5, 2012, issue of Nature, the JILA laser prototype relies on a million rubidium atoms doing a sort of synchronized line dance to produce a dim beam of deep red laser light. JILA is a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder (CU).

JILA/NIST physicist James Thompson says the new laser is based on a powerful engineering technique called "phased arrays" in which electromagnetic waves from a large group of identical antennas are carefully synchronized to build a combined wave with special useful features that are not possible otherwise.

"It's like what happens in the classical world but with quantum objects," Thompson explains. "If you line up lots of radio antennas that each emit an oscillating electric field, you can get all their electric fields to add up to make a really good directional antenna. In the same way, the individual atoms spontaneously form something like a phased array of antennas to give you a very directional laser beam."

An ordinary laser relies on millions of particles of light (photons) ricocheting back and forth between two mirrors, striking atoms in the lasing material and generating copies of themselves to build up intense light. Photons with synchronized wave patterns leak out of the mirrored cavity to form a laser beam. The laser frequency, or color, wobbles slightly because the mirrors are vibrating due to either the motion of atoms in the mirrors or environmental disturbances—which can be as subtle as people walking past the room or cars driving near the building.

That doesn't happen in the new JILA laser simply because the photons don't hang around long enough. The atoms are constantly energizing and emitting synchronized photons, but on the average, very few—less than one photon, in fact —stick around between the mirrors. This average, which scientists calculate indirectly based on the laser beam's output power, is just enough to maintain an oscillating electric field to sustain the atoms' synchronized behavior. Nearly all photons escape before they have a chance to become scrambled by the mirrors and disrupt the synchronized atoms—thus averting the very effect that causes laser frequency to wobble in a normal laser.

Thompson engineered a system that first traps the atoms in laser light between two mirrors and then uses other low-power lasers to tune the rate at which the atoms switch back and forth between two energy levels. The atoms emit photons each time their energy level drops. The atoms ordinarily would emit just one photon per second, but their correlated action boosts that rate 10,000-fold—making the light superradiant, Thompson says. This "stimulated emission" meets the definition of a laser (Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation).

"This superradiant laser is really, really dim—about a million times weaker than a laser pointer," Thompson says. "But it is much brighter than one would expect from the ordinary uncoordinated emissions from individual atoms."

Thompson's measurements show that the stability of the laser beam frequency is less than 1/10,000th as sensitive to mirror motion as in a normal optical laser. This result suggests the new approach might be used in the future to improve the best lasers developed at NIST as much as 1,000-fold. Just as important, such lasers might be moved out of the vibration-controlled laboratory environment to be used in real-world applications.

Despite its dim light, the extraordinary stability of the superradiant laser can be transferred by using it as part of a feedback system to "lock" a normal laser's output. The bright laser, potentially 100 to 1,000 times more stable than today's best lasers, could then be used in the most advanced atomic clocks to induce the atomic oscillations that are the pendulum ticks of super-accurate clocks. The added stability allows for a better match to the atoms' exact frequency, significantly boosting the precision of the clock. The improvement would extend to atomic clock-based technologies such as GPS, optical communications, advanced geodetic surveys and astronomy.

Thompson's work confirms predictions made several years ago by JILA/NIST Fellow Jun Ye and JILA/CU theorist Murray Holland, who is also a co-author of the new Nature paper. Thompson stresses that for the new laser design to achieve its highest potential stability and be of practical use, it will need to be re-created using different atoms, such as strontium, which are better suited for use in advanced atomic clocks.

The research is supported in part by the National Science Foundation, NIST, the Army Research Office and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

As a nonregulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NIST promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.