For ULI, the lead (proposing) organization must be an accredited, degree-granting U.S. college or university. Partners may include other U.S. colleges and universities, U.S. companies, U.S. non-profit organizations, U.S. federally funded research and development centers (FFRDC).
To be listed as an interested lead or partner, please send electronic mail to hq-univpartnerships@mail.nasa.gov. with "ULI Partnerships" in the subject line and include the information below.
| Organization Name | Organization POC | POC Email | Area of Research Interest | Lead/Partner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hampton University | Otsebele Nare; Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering |
otsebele.nare@hamptonu.edu | Thrust 1: Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations Thrust 4: Safe, Quite and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles; |
Lead/Partner |
| University of California, Berkeley |
Susan Shaheen, Professor
Adam Cohen, Researcher |
Public Perception/Societal Acceptance of UAM, VTOL, Electrification, and Autonomous Aviation Topics 1, 4, 5, 7
Topic 1: Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations Topic 4: Civil Aircraft that Incorporate Vertical Lift Capability Topic 5: Transition to Alternative Propulsion and Energy Topic 7: Assured Autonomy for Aviation Transformation |
Lead/Partner | |
| Rutgers University | Onur Bilgen | o.bilgen@rutgers.edu |
Topic 4: Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles. I am interested in novel morphing propellers. |
Lead/Partner |
|
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, Advanced Development Programs |
Michael Haro, Environmental Engineer Sr Staff | Bioinspired design (biomimetic) solutions to technology challenges faced in achieving NASA ULI strategies in Topics 1 through 7. For example, morphological adaptation of the serrations on the leading edge of owl wings resulting in noise reduction and improvements in aerodynamic performance or application of fractal heat pipes to distribute thermal loads on materials in hypersonic flight. Could potentially collaborate in ULI Round 4 or future rounds. | Partner | |
| Oregon State University | Prof. Yue Cao, Electrical Engineering (power electronics) | yue.cao@oregonstate.edu |
Topic 4: Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles. Prof. Cao has significant experiences with the propulsion system of heavy-duty all-electric VTOL UAV's. He is previously employed by and currently collaborating with Amazon Prime Air. He specializes in power electronics and motor drives to improve energy efficiency and system reliability, including control and hardware designs, such as fault-tolerant motors and inverters. He has also developed UAV multi-physical power systems modeling and optimization design tool. Prof. Cao received MS/PhD from UIUC (Urbana-Champaign) and BS from UT-Knoxville. Prof. Cao is an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification overseeing UAV related submissions and leading this effort in IEEE Transportation Electrification Community. Oregon State University offers geographical diversity in the Pacific Northwest and access to local Aerospace related industry. OSU owns a 750 kW lab capable of a variety of tests. |
Lead/Partner |
| West Virginia University, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering | Dr. Mario Perhinschi, Professor | Mario.Perhinschi@mail.wvu.edu |
Thrust 5: In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance Thrust 6: Assured Autonomy for Aviation Transformation Novel artificial intelligence techniques for system monitoring and control, focus on autonomous flight/UAVs |
Lead/Partner |
| Embry Riddle Aeronautical University | Reda Mankbadi, Professor of Aerospace Engineering | Aeroacoustics | Partner | |
| University of Florida | Corin Segal, Professor | cor@ufl.edu | Topic 7, experimental reacting and non-reacting supersonic flows in hypersonic regime | Partner |
| Georgia Institute of Technology | Dr. Krish Ahuja, Regents Professor of Aerospace Engineering (Expertise: Aeroacoustics) | krish.ahuja@ae.gatech.edu | Innovative Noise Control Technologies applicable to any one or all the first four topics | Lead/Partner |
| The Longbow Group LLC / USRTC - Fort Monroe, Virginia |
Marco Sterk |
Thrust 4: Safe, Quite and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles; Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) |
Partner | |
|
San Jose State University (HSI and AANAPISI) |
Dr. Ozgur Keles Assistant Professor, Materials Engineering, (Co-director, Advanced Manufacturing Lab) |
Topic 3: Ultra-Efficient Subsonic Transports (Strategic Thrust 3) Topic 4: Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles (Strategic Thrust 4) Additive manufacturing of complex materials Toughening and degradation mechanisms Quantum dot synthesis and nano-composites Computational fracture mechanics |
Lead/Partner |
|
| Louisiana State University | Dr. Shyam Menon, Assistant professor, Mechanical Engineering | smenon@lsu.edu | Thrust 4: Safe, Quite and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles. We are involved in development of hybrid powertrains for aircraft/rotorcraft particularly for smaller power requirements suited to urban mobility. |
Partner |
|
Interdisciplinary Consulting Corp (IC2) |
Dr. David Mills, President | dmills@thinkic2.com | Topic 7: Novel In-Flight and Ground Measurement Techniques for Hypersonic Flight | Partner |
| Purdue University | Guillermo Paniagua | gpaniagua@purdue.edu |
Propulsion for Topic 2: Innovation in Commercial Supersonic Aircraft (Strategic Thrust 2) Topic 3: Ultra-Efficient Subsonic Transports (Strategic Thrust 3) Topic 4: Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles Topic 7: Novel In-Flight and Ground Measurement Techniques for Hypersonic Flight |
Lead/Partner |
| University of Tennessee Knoxville | Dr. Zhenbo Wang, Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering | zwang124@utk.edu | Topic 4: Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles Topic 6: Assured Autonomy for Aviation Transformation Topic 7: Novel In-Flight and Ground Measurement Techniques for Hypersonic Flight Guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C); optimal control; real-time control and optimization; convex optimization; artificial intelligence and machine learning; trajectory optimization; atmospheric flight vehicles; unmanned aerial vehicles; urban air mobility; hypersonic vehicles |
Partner |
|
University of Arizona |
Dr. Kyle Hanquist Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering |
Topic 7: Novel In-Flight and Ground Measurement Techniques for Hypersonic Flight Computational Fluid Dynamics, Reactive Flow and Nonequilibrium Modeling, Fluid-Structure-Thermal Interactions, Heat Load Predictions, Simulations, Thermal Protection Systems High-speed and hypersonic wind tunnel testing, shockwave boundary layer interaction, boundary layer stability and transition |
Lead/Partner | |
| University of Cincinnati | Dr. Ou Ma | maou@ucmail.uc.edu |
Thrust 1: Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations; |
Lead/Partner |
| Flight Safety Foundation | Dr. Hassan Shahidi | shahidi@flightsafety.org |
Thrust 1: Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations; |
Partner |
| CREDIT Center, Prairie View A&M University (HBCU) | Lijun Qian, AT&T Endowed Professor, Director of CREDIT center | liqian@pvamu.edu | Topic 6: Assured Autonomy for Aviation Transformation (Strategic Thrust 6) | Lead/Partner |
| VerdeGo Aero Inc. | Eric Bartsch, CEO VerdeGo Aero | ericb@verdegoaero.com |
Topic 4: Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles - VerdeGo’s engineering team is developing large-scale piston hybrid-electric and battery-electric powertrain systems for peak power requirements up to 1MW. Our Jet-A piston (diesel) hybrid hardware has a significantly lower SFC than other hybrid approaches, and we are currently building full scale hardware for ground-based testing and refinement. We also have multi-rotor controls design & testing capabilities and full-scale propulsion test facilities for characterizing performance, control, and noise. VerdeGo is interested in being a partner for research involving powertrain noise reduction, energy/fuel efficiency of hybrid-electric systems, and improvements to safety and redundancy within both hybrid-electric and battery-electric powertrains involving distributed electric propulsion. We also have expertise with large-scale immersion cooled battery pack hardware for battery-electric powertrain applications. |
Partner |
|
University of Georgia |
Wenwen Wang Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science |
Computer systems (architectures, compilers, operation systems, runtimes, code generation, software testing, secure and trusted execution environments) |
Partner | |
| University of Minnesota |
Suo Yang, Richard & Barbara Nelson Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering (Director, Computational Reactive Flow & Energy Lab, https://cse.umn.edu/me/suo-yang) |
Topic 2: Innovation in Commercial Supersonic Aircraft (Strategic Thrust 2) Topic 7: Novel In-Flight and Ground Measurement Techniques for Hypersonic Flight Modeling and Simulation (Computational Fluid Dynamics) of Reacting Flows (Combustion, Turbulence, Nonequilibrium Plasma Physics, Particulate and Multiphase Flows, Supersonic/Hypersonic Aerothermodynamics, Thermoacoustics, and their Multiscale Interactions), including RANS, LES, and DNS, using both physics-based and data-driven modeling approaches. |
Lead/Partner | |
|
University of Utah |
Pai Wang, Jacob Hochhalter and Robert Parker Department of Mechanical Engineering |
pai.wang@utah.edu |
Topic 4: Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles We are interested in novel designs and agile product developments for noise reduction and vibration mitigation in Urban Air Mobility, aiming at next-generation ultra-light-weight and self-adaptive solutions at the material, structure and system levels. |
Lead/Partner |
| University of Texas at Dallas | Majid Minary, Eugene McDermott Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering | Topic 7: Novel In-Flight and Ground Measurement Techniques for Hypersonic Flight, Additive Manufacturing of Polymer-Derived Ceramics for high temperature sensors | Partner | |
| University of Alabama in Huntsville | Konstantinos Kanistras, Assistant Professor in the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department https://aafc.uah.edu/ |
Topic 3: Ultra-Efficient Subsonic Transports (Strategic Thrust 3) Applied Aerodynamics, Active/Passive Flow control, Aircraft Performance, Aircraft Stability and Control. Wind Tunnel Testing, Flow Visualization and PIV testing, UAS flight testing. |
Partner | |
| Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University | Houbing Song, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, and Director, Security and Optimization for Networked Globe Laboratory (SONG Lab, http://www.songlab.us/) |
houbing.song@erau.edu |
Topic 1: Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations (Strategic Thrust 1) Topic 5: In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance (Strategic Thrust 5) Topic 6: Assured Autonomy for Aviation Transformation (Strategic Thrust 6) |
Lead/Partner |
|
The Center for Advanced Power Systems of the Florida State University (CAPS-FSU) |
Gian Carlo Montanari Research Faculty CAPS |
Main area is insulating material and insulation systems in any type of aerospace and deep space-moon application. Design of insulation, material characterization and specifications, aging model and reliability, premature failure mechanisms, diagnostic properties, monitoring and condition assessment/maintenance. Superconducting cables. Drives. |
Lead/Partner |
|
| Universities Space Research Association | Dr. David Bell, Director | dbell@usra.edu |
Topic 1: Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations Topic 4: Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles Topic 5: In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance Topic 6: Assured Autonomy for Aviation Transformation |
Partner |
|
The University of Texas at Arlington |
Dr. Luca Maddalena, Professor and Director, Aerodynamics Research Center |
Topic 7: Novel In-Flight and Ground Measurement Techniques for Hypersonic Flight Development of calorimeters for arc-jet flow under constant and variable heat-flux representative of simulated trajectory requirements. Development of non-intrusive advanced diagnostics for arc-jet free-stream and shock-layer velocity, composition, and thermochemical non-equilibrium effects (fs-TALIF, FLEET, potentially CARS) with concurrent TPS material degradation. Development of turbulence intensity measurements and effects on TPS testing. Advanced non-metallic (graphite / zirconia) temperature and heat-flux sensors for in-flight and ground measurements for hypersonics (internal and external flows) Operating 1.6MW arc-jet facility “Leste” |
Lead/Partner | |
| New Mexico State University (Minority Serving Institute) | Dr. J.I. Frankel, Department Head and R. Myers Endowed Professor |
Topic 7: Novel In-Flight and Ground Measurement Techniques for Hypersonic Flight Dr. Frankel’s work involves developing uniquely analyzed and designed slug calorimeters for arcjets with advanced data reduction equations for resolving surface heat flux in hostile environments. He is also working on developing new calibration-based data reduction equations for estimating heat flux using thin-film temperature sensors (front of substrate and back of slug) for milli-second time scale experiments associated with shock (impulse) facilities. |
Partner/Lead | |
| Texas A&M University | Jennifer Strong, Associate Professor | dr.jen@tamu.edu | leadership development, team building and development, leading teams, mentorship, ethical leadership, evaluation | Partner |
| University of Cincinnati | Prashant Khare | Prashant.Khare@uc.edu | Multiphase fluid dynamics, combustion, machine learning applied to complex multiphase fluid dynamics, subsonic and supersonic non-reacting and reacting flows, acoustics, efficient combustion, direct numerical simulations, large eddy simulations | Partner |
| San Jose State University | Dr. Wenbin Wei, Professor | wenbin.wei@sjsu.edu |
Strategic Thrust 1: Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations; Strategic Thrust 4: Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles; Strategic Thrust 5: In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance; Strategic Thrust 6: Assured Autonomy for Aviation Transformation; |
Lead/Partner |
| Aurora Flight Sciences | Michael Klinker, Future Mobility | klinker.michael@aurora.aero |
Topics 1, 3, 4, 5, 6. Cybersecurity, Aviation Security, Certifiability, Robust AI, Swarm Autonomy, Manned Unmanned Teaming, Urban Air Mobility, NAS Integration, Detect and Avoid. |
Partner |