Air Force Funds New Material Research Center of Excellence

The Air Force Research Lab has selected a Johns Hopkins University-led research team to establish a materials research center of excellence at the school’s Baltimore campus to support the development of next-generation military aircraft structures and turbine engines. “We’ll start by understanding existing materials from the atomic scale all the way to the structural scales through state-of-the-art research, and then we’ll move to designing a new generation of advanced aerospace materials,” said Somnath Ghosh, a JH professor who will be director of the new Center of Excellence on Integrated Material Modeling, in JHU’s Sept. 13 release. “Our initiative seeks to shorten the time required to benefit from advantages offered by advanced materials,” said Barry Farmer, chief scientist in AFRL’s materials and manufacturing directorate at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He added, “We believe that a spectrum of computational tools, coupled with advances in experimental capabilities, can alter the paradigm of how materials are selected and utilized today.” AFRL’s initial contract to the university is for $3 million over a three-year period.