{"id":80484,"date":"2013-07-30T09:48:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T13:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=80484"},"modified":"2013-08-08T09:15:36","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T13:15:36","slug":"engineering-team-awarded-nsf-grant-for-academic-liaison-with-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/07\/engineering-team-awarded-nsf-grant-for-academic-liaison-with-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineering Team Awarded NSF Grant for Academic Liaison with Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pratt<\/a>
Pratt & Whitney Chair professor Robert Gao, second from left, with (left to right) Zhaoyan Fan, assistant research professor of mechanical engineering, and Ph.D. students Peng Wang and Jinjiang Wang, with a drivetrain prognostic simulator. (Chris LaRosa\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Robert X. Gao<\/a>, the Pratt & Whitney Chair Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and his colleagues have received a three-year National Science Foundation grant to support collaborative research aimed at improving spare parts inventory management in the aircraft industry.<\/p>\n

UConn shares this three-year, $450,000 award with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Pratt & Whitney is the industry partner on the project.<\/p>\n

The grant is part of the NSF\u2019s GOALI<\/a> program (Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry), which is intended to catalyze industry-university partnerships and help ensure that \u201cintellectual capital and emerging technologies are brought together in ways that promote economic growth and an improved quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The models and methods will be beneficial to a wide array of manufacturing firms for whom after-sale service is a critical component of their business.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The goal of Gao\u2019s project is to develop the basic science and practical tools to transform sensor measurements collected from a large number of distributed machines (such as jet engines) in the field into forecasting methodologies \u2013 along with inventory policies \u2013 for the spare parts required to maintain the equipment. The researchers, aided by their colleagues at Pratt & Whitney, will pursue four lines of research:<\/p>\n