AFRL announces materials-focused CoE at Carnegie Mellon

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, together with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, has awarded a multi-million-dollar cooperative agreement to Carnegie Mellon University to create a materials-focused Center of Excellence.

With a 50 percent match from CMU, the Center of Excellence will fund cutting-edge research and develop Ph.D. students in an emerging area of materials science: using artificial intelligence and machine learning to discover, analyze, design and develop both existing and new high-tech materials.

“This is a joint effort between AFRL’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate and AFOSR,” said AFRL project manager Sean Donegan. He went on to explain that in creating the Center of Excellence, AFRL is hoping to develop its own future workforce. “We are funding Ph.D. students to do their research in areas we think are important skills that will be especially useful for AFRL.”

According to Donegan, this Center of Excellence is unique in that the funding agency, AFRL, is also an active member of the team. “There will be significant collaboration between AFRL and the CMU students,” said Donegan. “Student researchers will spend their summers onsite at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and AFRL scientists will, in turn, spend time at CMU throughout the academic year.”

“We’re very interested in expanding the horizons for materials research by utilizing and developing new techniques from artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said Donegan.

Source: AFRL