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NSF awards up to $15M to UTEP for workforce, manufacturing development [1]

['Daniel Perez', 'More Daniel Perez', 'El Paso Matters']

Date: 2024-01-29

The National Science Foundation announced Monday that the University of Texas at El Paso will lead one of its 10 inaugural Regional Innovation Engines focused on growing the area’s defense and aerospace manufacturing.

Each “Engine” will receive up to $15 million over two years.

The Paso Del Norte Defense & Aerospace Innovation Engine expects to enhance the academic and job opportunities for residents of eight counties in West Texas and Southern New Mexico. The goal is to grow the region’s ability to manufacture, commercialize and deploy new defense and aerospace technology.

UTEP’s proposal was led by the university’s Aerospace Center and the W.M. Keck Center for 3D Innovation, but it involved input from private, nonprofit and government collaborators. Those center’s leaders, Ahsan Choudhuri and Ryan Wicker, respectively, believe their innovative plan will address academics, employment and manufacturing issues.

Choudhuri, associate vice president of UTEP’s Aerospace Center and the engine’s principal investigator, said the proposal will build the necessary infrastructure and talent to grow the region’s share of advanced industry jobs from 3.2% to 25% by 2034.

“We know that if you build it, success will come,” Choudhuri said.

Wicker, executive director of the Keck Center and the proposal’s co-principal investigator, said that both globally recognized centers are ready to apply their innovation techniques in research and development to help the region, but there are a lot of pieces to this plan to establish a workforce and infrastructure.

“We’re both producing students who have to leave,” Wicker said. “We want those students to stay here. We have to add the industrial base here in order to do that. That’s what we’re doing.”

Students in UTEP’s Center for Space Exploration Technology Research focus on aerospace initiatives. (Courtesy of UTEP)

The coalition is made up of UTEP, Spaceport America, El Paso Community College, Workforce Solutions Borderplex, the city and county of El Paso, the Rio Grande Council of Governments and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining. The leaders of these organizations praised the NSF’s decision.

Part of the engine funds will go toward the building of public infrastructure that will provide small- and medium-sized manufacturers with access to innovative and affordable design and testing tools.

The NSF could invest up to $1.6 billion into these research-and-development programs spread throughout the country during the next decade. The money will come from the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.

NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said the inaugural NSF engines awards demonstrate the agency’s continuous commitment to create opportunity everywhere and enable innovation anywhere.

“Through these NSF Engines, NSF aims to expand the frontiers of technology and innovation and spur economic growth across the nation through unprecedented investments in people and partnerships,” Panchanathan said in the announcement. “NSF Engines hold significant promise to elevate and transform entire geographic regions into world-leading hubs of innovation.”

The NSF selected the El Paso region as one of its engines because of its emergence as a center of space innovation led by UTEP and its collaborations with NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The program partners work together on digital engineering, a space industry accelerator and an important Lunar Surface Technology Research Award.

The NSF Paso Del Norte engine web page states that aerospace technology developed through the combination of academic and industry partnerships and the proximity of White Sands Missile Range will benefit the area’s economic fortunes and enhance national supply chains for defense and aerospace.

The regional engine’s key technology areas are robotics and advanced manufacturing, advanced computing and semiconductors, advanced materials, advanced energy and industrial efficiency technologies, artificial intelligence, data and cybersecurity.

The NSF funding also will create the Aerospace and Defense Technologies Training Centers that will help prepare high school students and underpaid workers with the necessary skills to work in the defense aerospace and advanced manufacturing fields to achieve a middle-class lifestyle. Wicker and Choudhuri also mentioned a desire to tap into military members who separate from the armed forces annually with a background in leadership and knowledge of various defense systems.

The NSF said that those engines that achieve certain goals could receive up to $160 million during the next 10 years as they use the funds to entice additional investors. Wicker and Choudhuri expect the Paso Del Norte engine to achieve the necessary benchmarks to earn every dollar.

The federal government also awarded in 2022 a $40 million prize to a coalition led by UTEP for reasons similar to the Paso Del Norte engine.

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[1] Url: https://elpasomatters.org/2024/01/29/utep-nsf-keck-center-aerospace-center-ahsan-choudhuri-ryan-wicker/

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