Jeffrey Mosher caught up with MEDC's Tony Vernaci. Here's their latest discussion! Vernaci says the state’s aerospace assets continue to amaze me and quite frankly, I believe they are much more significant than many realized.
I had a meeting this past week with Dr. A.W. (Tony) England who is Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science for The University of Michigan in Dearborn. Just to give you some of his background…
If you remember the movie Apollo 13 (based off the true story) when the astronaut’s lives were in danger because it was believe they could not survive reentry, there was a scramble in a simulator on the ground to develop a solution to the carbon monoxide issue. Dr. England was the real life astronaut who was crawling around the simulator and came up with the makeshift canister from supplies the crew had onboard with them in space.
Dr. England did have one flight in space which happened to be on the Space Shuttle Challenger just a couple of missions before the fatal explosion in 1986.
The purpose of my visit with Dr. England was to discuss his views on Michigan’s aerospace industry and how we can continue to strengthen it for the future.
Interestingly, without any prompting, in Dr. England’s comments he drew lines of similarities between the aerospace and automotive industries. Two of the ways he mentioned were light weighting and cybersecurity. Both of these are extremely important for both industries.
We are extremely fortunate to have 2 new light weighting institutes right in the City of Detroit. LIFT (focused on metals) and IACMI (focused on composites). These institutes are co-located in one location and Michigan won these in a competition with other states. They represent $300 million of investment from the US Department of Defense, private industry and the State of Michigan.
This is important technology for the aircraft OEM’s as they work to reduce fuel cost and the automotive OEM’s work to meet the 54.5 gallons per mile federal standard by 2025.
Both institutes have private industry partners from aerospace and automotive working together in collaborative development. Companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin along with American Axle, ALCOA, Eaton and United Technologies.
When you consider the importance of cybersecurity to both industries, Michigan is also leading the way.
The Merit Network in Ann Arbor where companies can test their latest and greatest in cybersecurity in a safe and secure test environment.
The University of Michigan opened M-City (a 32 acre test site) in July of last year which is a mock up city and street environment for testing of the technologies for connected and automated vehicles.
The State of Michigan just announced this year an investment in the Willow Run site to build a 300 acre test site for connected and autonomous vehicles that will bring together, industry, government and academia for development and testing of technologies and regulations.
Cybersecurity will be a top priority for both of these test sites
So all of this circles back to my opening comments about how I am simply amazed every day with Michigan’s strength in the aerospace industry. We are so fortunate to have people like Dr. England who are a wealth of education and experience that are leading and teaching students for our future. Couple that with the University of Michigan’s aeronautical engineering program that is the oldest in the nation, U of M’s M-City, the Willow Run project, our light weighting institutes and The Merit Network. Michigan is truly in a position to be a leader in transforming technology for both aerospace and automotive.
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