Gerhard Klimeck, Director of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and David McKinnis, Director, Technical Assistance Program and Associate Vice Provost for Engagement, participated in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in a March 2, 2011 at a White House event that announced the newly formed National Digital Engineering and Manufacturing Consortium (NDEMC).

nanoHUB.org and Purdue University’s HUBzero® platform for collaboration are key elements of NDEMC because they will support The Midwest Project for SME – OEM Use of Modeling and Simulation project for the first large-scale, public-private partnership of the United States Government, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), state and university computing centers, and other non-governmental organizations to provide education, training, and access to computing resources for the Small and Medium‐Size Enterprises (SMEs) manufacturing workforce to develop modeling and simulation skills.

The $4.5 million program will make time on supercomputers available and train SME personnel in the use of computational modeling and simulation. Purdue’s participation in NDEMC will benefit up to 50 Indiana companies.

The project responds directly to President Obama’s call for America to “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world in order to win the future,” said Ron Bloom, Assistant to the President for Manufacturing Policy, and a signatory of the MOU.  The MOU was signed by David McKinnis; John Fernandez, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Ecommerce for Economic Development; Aneesh Cheepra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer; Deborah Wince-Smith, Council on Competitiveness President and CEO; and representatives of the other partners.

The Council on Competitiveness, a nonpartisan group of CEOs, university presidents and labor leaders, is leader of the project. NDEMC partners in addition to Purdue University include the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois, Ohio Supercomputer Center, and the State of Ohio. Industrial partners include General Electric, John Deere, Lockheed Martin, and Procter & Gamble. In addition to the U.S. Department of Commerce, federal agency partners include the Departments of Defense and Energy, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Small Business Administration.

Funding for the project consists of a $2 million grant from EDA and a $2.5 million from the private-sector partners.

An international resource for nanotechnology development and education, nanoHUB.org, which is part of the Purdue-based Network for Computational Nanotechnology, now makes 195 interaction and simulation tools available. In the past 12 months more than 10,000 users ran 364,000 simulations.