NASA has selected four university-led teams to compete for awards that will allow them to spend up to five years exploring novel ideas to improve aviation, including emission elimination and autonomy research in support of advanced air mobility.
NASA’s Research Approach to Sustainable Aviation you will get great help from the newly selected teams of university professors and students to participate in the agency’s College Leadership Initiative (ULI).
ULI provides the academic community with the opportunity to support NASA’s aeronautical research goals and provide students with valuable experience in solving real-world technical challenges.
“The aviation of the future has to be environment-friendly to keep the world flying and a great way to do that is to allow tomorrow’s most important minds start making contributions to these goals while they are still in school ”, said Koushik Datta, ULI project manager.
Three of the four teams are working to reduce or eliminate aircraft emissions and each team approaches the problem from a slightly different perspective. The fourth team’s autonomy research supports NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility campaign.
Another key goal of ULI is that students gain experience in leading a multidisciplinary team made up of partners from other universities and industries, including student populations who are underrepresented or who have not applied their skills to aviation problems.
“A diverse research team allows more voices to be heard and more creative ideas explored,” said Datta. A total of four teams were selected for final negotiations that could lead to prizes of up to $ 31.5 million for the next five years.
The four teams and his research topics are:
– University of Central Florida: The team will explore using liquid ammonia, a non-traditional source, as fuel for a jet engine and generating electricity from engine exhaust heat, reducing emissions and saving fuel. Team members include Georgia Tech, Purdue University, Boeing, GE Research, ANSYS, Southwest Research Institute, and the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority.
– Florida State University: The team will consider how hybrid power generation of hydrogen and electricity could be combined with fuel cell technology to reduce emissions. Team members include Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, University at Buffalo, University of Kentucky, Georgia Tech, Raytheon, Boeing, and Advanced Magnet Lab.
– Georgia Institute of Technology: The team will focus its attention on the challenges of sustainable aviation related to the combustion chamber of a jet engine, but in this case the engine is powering commercial supersonic transport. Team members include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Virginia Tech, Spelman College, Missouri University of Science and Technology, General Electric, and Aerodyne Research Incorporated.
– University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: The team aims to offer reliable autonomy tools to help Advanced Air Mobility aircraft fly safely through complex airspace, typical of dense urban environments. Team members include Georgia Tech, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, North Carolina A&T State University, University of Nevada at Reno, Lockheed Martin, and Sierra Nevada Corporation.
This is the fifth time that a set of teams has been selected to participate in ULI. Six teams were selected in early 2021, five teams were chosen in 2020, three teams were announced in 2019, and five teams were selected for the inaugural initiative in 2017.
–
