President Obama Announces Launch of Two New Innovation Institutes

Last May, President Obama announced his plan for improving the technological backbone of manufacturing in the US with the formation of a series of 15 public-private funded manufacturing innovation institutes throughout the country. The pilot institute, America Makes (or NAMII), opened shortly thereafter in Youngstown, OH and began to serve as a hub for high-tech manufacturing, including additive manufacturing, for the region.

With the pilot program humming away, the President has announced two new institutes led by the Department of Defense and supported by a $140 million in Federal funding that has been matched by $140 million in private funding. The new innovation hub in Detroit will focus on lightweight and modern metals manufacturing, while the hub in Chicago will concentrate on digital manufacturing and design technologies. 

“… the economy has changed,” said President Obama. “And if we want to attract more good manufacturing jobs to America, we’ve got to make sure we’re on the cutting edge of new manufacturing techniques and technologies. That’s what these new hubs are all about. They’re partnerships — they bring together companies and universities to develop cutting-edge technology, train workers to use that technology, and make sure research is turned into real-world products made by American workers.”

From the White House:

The winning Lightweight and Modern Metals Manufacturing Innovation – or LM3I – Institute team, headquartered in the Detroit area and led by EWI, brings together a 60-member consortium that pairs the world’s leading aluminum, titanium, and high strength steel manufacturers with universities and laboratories pioneering new technology development and research.  The long-term goal of the LM3I Institute will be to expand the market for, and create new consumers of, products and systems that utilize new, lightweight, high‑performing metals and alloys by removing technological barriers to their manufacture.  The Institute will achieve this through leadership in pre-competitive advanced research and partnerships across defense, aerospace, automotive, energy, and consumer products industries.”

The new Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation (DMDI) institute in Chicago is led by UI Labs, and includes 73 companies, universities, nonprofits, and research labs with the goals of improving the supply chain, developing new digital tools for design and testing, and discovering new methods for businesses to reduce manufacturing costs.

President Obama launched a new competition for the Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation Institute, led by the Department of Energy. This new institute will award $70 million in funding over a five year period to research teams with plans for improvements to a number of existing technologies.

This list includes new ideas for producing fiber-reinforced polymer composites at production speeds, improvements to cost and performance needed for widespread use in clean energy products including fuel-efficient and electric vehicles, and ideas for wind turbines, and hydrogen and natural gas storage tanks.

For more information on the Innovation Institutes, read Desktop Engineering’s coverage in its Virtual Desktop blog.

Below you’ll find a short video in which President Obama talks about America’s manufacturing future.

Source: White House