Webinar to Highlight ASME Foundation Swanson Fellowships and the NNMI Program

Aug. 19, 2016

On Sept. 15, ASME Government Relations will present a special webinar, titled “The National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI): Striving for U.S. Global Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing,” which will feature two ASME Foundation Swanson Fellows. During the webinar, which will take place from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time, the Fellows will provide viewers with an update on the NNMI program, the program’s network of manufacturing innovation institutes, its strategic plan and institute partnerships, current and future NNMI opportunities, as well as highlights from their yearlong ASME Fellowships.

One of the guest speakers, Shreyes Melkote, Ph.D., recently completed his term as a 2015-2016 ASME Foundation Swanson Fellow serving in the Interagency Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office (AMNPO) hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md. As assistant director for Technology at the AMNPO, Dr. Melkote participated in various NNMI program activities. He currently works at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, where he holds the Morris M. Bryan Jr. Professorship in Mechanical Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing Systems.

The second Swanson Fellow featured in the webinar, Frank Pfefferkorn, Ph.D., also served his 2015-2016 Fellowship at the AMNPO in Gaithersburg, Md. He is the point of contact in AMNPO for the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Subcommittee on Advanced Manufacturing (SAM) and MForesight: the Alliance for Manufacturing Foresight, which is funded through a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Dr. Pfefferkorn is also the main point of contact for the project to craft a new identity for the NNMI Program and helped craft the messaging for the program’s participation in the Hannover Messe 2016 trade fair in Germany and the International Manufacturing Technology Show 2016 in Chicago, Ill. Pfefferkorn is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when he is not serving in the AMNPO.

The webinar’s third guest speaker, Lester Su, Ph.D., is a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Stanford University and the chair of the ASME Committee on Government Relations. He was an ASME Congressional Fellow in 2000-2001 and has remained involved with ASME’s policy activities since that time. Dr. Lester’s technical interests are in energy systems, fluid mechanics, and combustion, while his policy interests center on federal research funding, STEM education, and workforce development issues.

The NNMI is a U.S. Federal Government program for coordinating public and private investments to improve the competitiveness and productivity of U.S. manufacturing through the creation of a robust network of manufacturing innovation institutes, each focused on a specific and promising advanced manufacturing technology area. The NNMI Program advances American manufacturing innovation by creating an effective research and development, technology transition, workforce training and education outreach infrastructure for U.S. industry and academia to solve industry-relevant manufacturing problems. The vision of the NNMI Program is a network of institutes that bring U.S. industry, academia, and government together to solve pre-competitive cross-sector manufacturing challenges that an individual entity cannot solve alone.

Currently, the NNMI encompasses nine manufacturing innovation institutes: America Makes — The National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute; the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII); Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow (LIFT); PowerAmerica — The Next Generation Power Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Institute; the Institute of Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI); the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics); NextFlex — America’s Flexible Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Institute; the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA); and the Manufacturing Innovation Institute on Smart Manufacturing. The institutes, each led by manufacturing experts renowned in their field, have attracted nearly 1,000 companies, universities and nonprofits as members. For more information on the NNMI Program, visit https://www.manufacturing.gov/nnmi.

The NNMI webinar is open to both ASME members and non-members. To register, visit https://shop.asme.org/Registrations/Conference/FNDWEB2016. Additional information on the webinar will be posted on the Public Policy Education Center at http://ppec.asme.org