Leading academic highlights major transformation of aerospace industry

Citation

(2002), "Leading academic highlights major transformation of aerospace industry", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 74 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2002.12774baf.006

Leading academic highlights major transformation of aerospace industry

Keywords: Aerospace industry, Training, Product development

The aerospace industry is undergoing a major transformation as highlighted recently by a leading American academic at the Cambridge-MIT Institute's monthly Distinguished Lecture.

Sheila Widnall, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delivered a lecture at MIT that was broadcast to Cambridge by live video link. Professor Widnall maintained that the US aerospace industry's focus has changed as a result of defence cuts in the mid 1990s and military industrial over capacity. The industry is now responding to the call for "cheaper, faster and better products" and this has implications for the way aeronautical and astronautical engineering students should be trained.

Professor Widnall is closely involved with MIT's 'Lean Aerospace Initiative', which has resulted in the partnership of MIT, the Air Force, trade unions and defence aerospace business. Its mission is "to deliver military aerospace products at significantly reduced costs and cycle time while meeting or exceeding performance expectations and enhancing the effectiveness of our national workforce."

MIT is already highly innovative in its teaching in these areas, responding to calls from industry for graduate recruits to oversee a project from drawing board to finished product. Recently, students in the department of aeronautics and astronautics were given the design for a network of miniature satellites that could carry the mirrors for a new space telescope. When the students had produced their models in the engineering lab, they and the mini satellites were taken up in NASA's KC-135 training aeroplane, where they could experience weightlessness and find out whether their models really would stabilise in zero gravity.

Secretary of the United States Air Force from 1993-7, Professor Widnall still carries out a number of prestigious industry and government commitments including membership of the independent commission set up to investigate the security lapses at Boston's Logan Airport on 11^th September.

The Cambridge-MIT Institute Distinguished Lectures are a series of monthly talks by experts in their fields, offered free to academics, people from industry and interested members of the public.

Details available from: CMI. Tel: +44 (0) 1223 327 207.