NASA pours $30 million into four university teams to reshape aviation research

NASA has awarded approximately $30 million in multiyear funding to four university teams to advance research in the field of aviation. The grants, issued through the agency’s University Leadership Initiative, support projects focused on high-supersonic propulsion, machine learning-enabled avionics, low-noise urban flight paths, and advanced aircraft design modelling.

This marks the ninth round of funding for the initiative, which has operated for more than 10 years under NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate. The programme is designed to develop the US aeronautics workforce by providing hands-on research experiences for graduate and undergraduate students. Recipients are required to form academic partnerships with other universities, community colleges, and industry, while receiving guidance from experts at NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, and other organisations.

Andrew Provenza, project manager at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, stated that the awards align with the agency’s aeronautics mission priorities. He noted that the selected teams will research new propulsion concepts for supersonic flight, novel engineering methods for aerospace system design, and learning-enabled avionics for advanced and urban air mobility platforms.

One of the selected projects, led by Terrence Meyer, will work over four years to develop a fuel-flexible propulsion system. The system is designed to use a traditional jet turbofan during takeoff and subsonic flight before transitioning to a ramjet engine for supersonic cruise at Mach 4, or more than 3,000 miles per hour.

Somil Bansal is leading a separate four-year project aimed at developing an avionics system that incorporates machine learning to control aircraft communications and navigation. The system is designed to ensure safety is continuously reinforced throughout operations, potentially creating a framework for the aviation sector to integrate artificial intelligence-enabled avionics into the national airspace.

Juan Alonso’s four-year project involves creating a high-fidelity simulation framework to develop low-noise flight paths for urban air mobility aircraft. The centre established through this award will integrate realistic models of how sound travels in cities to reduce community noise exposure from new air traffic.

Finally, Darshan Sarojini is leading a three-year project that proposes to transform next-generation aircraft design using model-based systems engineering, multidisciplinary design, and high-dimensional uncertainty quantification. The goal is to achieve safer, faster, and more efficient modelling that results in fewer costly redesigns later in the aircraft development cycle.