The AIRCRAFT team conducts cutting-edge R&D and develops innovative technologies integrated into an engineered system that will produce agricultural and forestry-based chemicals, materials, and fuels for the aviation industry.
Organized around four research thrusts, this NSF ERC’s research activities include:
- Engineering desired attributes into purpose-grown energy crops that will enhance carbon efficiency and develop scalable energy crop production systems with ecosystem benefits;
- Developing integrated and adaptable processes and technologies to manufacture fungible chemicals, materials, and fuels in a carbon- and cost-efficient manner;
- Advancing and deploying traditional and foundational AI models to address complex, use-inspired challenges, facilitating the transfer of technologies to the marketplace and deriving value for AIRCRAFT industry partners and other stakeholders; and
- Identifying and implementing strategies to remove barriers in the human-dimension sphere, fostering public support and driving prosperity for both the public and private sectors.
With AI-guided modeling to accelerate discoveries, breakthroughs in new aviation chemicals, materials, and fuels and fundamental insights will be translated from proof-of-concept, lab-scale experiments to greenhouse, field, or pilot-scale operations. Systems-level holistic decision-support modeling analysis will guide research and scale new innovative processes to field demonstrations with industrial partners.
