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6 A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 1 9 A new research grant will en- able Air Force aircraft to remain mis- sion-ready for longer periods and save repair costs over the next few decades. The U.S. Air Force Research Laborato- ry recently awarded Wichita State Uni- versity’s National Institute for Aviation Research a $23.5 million contract for modeling composite inspection and repair techniques for aircraft in active service. The grant will enable the in- stitute to hire more student employ- ees, which means it is currently seeking students with U.S. citizenship to work under the Department of Defense con- tract. Through this grant, the institute’s Advanced Technologies Lab for Aero- space Systems (ATLAS) will performma- terials research and development on new manufacturing, repair, and inspec- tion processes for the contract. ATLAS is currently under construction in an annex at the rear of the institute’s cam- pus headquarters. GRANT SUPPORTS GRAPHENE RESEARCH Zen Graphene Solutions Ltd., Can- ada, signed a memorandum of under- standing with the University of British Columbia (UBC), Okanagan Campus, where Zen will contribute a minimum of $300,000 over three years in support of graphene research and application development. Zen has already supplied samples of its graphene and graphene oxide to UBC where it has undergone preliminary testing in the following ap- plications: battery technologies, as an additive in cement-based composites as well as aluminum and aluminum al- loys, and as a diesel and jet fuel addi- tive. zengraphene.com . U.S. Air Force officials on a tour of Wichita State’s National Institute for Aviation Research. RESEARCH TRACKS NEW FUNDING AIMS TO KEEP AIR FORCE MISSION-READY materials by using supercomputers. Seven projects will be supported, three led by Argonne, Brookhaven, and Law- rence Livermore National Laboratories and four led by the University of Illinois, the Pennsylvania State University, the University of Texas, and the University of Southern California. The projects will develop open source software using the DOE’s current tools as well as future ex- ascale computing facilities. The goal is to provide the software platforms and data to design new func- tional materials with a broad range of applications, including alternative and renewable energy, electronics, data storage, and materials for quantum in- formation science. The new awards are part of the DOE’s Computational Materials Sciences program, launched in 2015 to keep up with the growth in computing power and the increasing capability of high-performance com- puters to model and simulate the be- havior of matter at the atomic and mo- lecular scales. Researchers are expected to use existing petaflop supercomputers and prepare for next-generation exaflop machines scheduled for deployment in the early 2020s. Current machines in- clude the 200-petaflop Summit com- puter at the Oak Ridge Leadership Com- puting Facility, the 11-petaflop Theta computer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, and the 30-petaflop Cori machine at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley Nation- al Laboratory. A petaflop is a million- billion floating-pointoperationsper sec- ond while an exaflop is a billion-billion calculations. Funding for the new proj- ects will total $8 million in 2019 with subsequent annual funding contingent on available appropriations and project performance. energy.gov. DESIGNING MATERIALS WITH SUPERCOMPUTERS In June, the DOE announced it will invest $32 million over the next four years to accelerate the design of new