Banner image: Prior to the launch of PARI, Aerospace Sciences Laboratory at Purdue University included the Boeing/ AFOSR Mach-6 Quiet Tunnel. Joseph Jewell, the John Bogdanoff Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, led a tour of that tunnel during the Hypersonics 2.0 Summit.
Leaders from Purdue, the federal government and industry joined PARI leadership and staff in celebrating the opening of the Hypersonics and Applied Research Facility (HARF), a $41-million, 65,000-square-foot building that is home to two cutting-edge wind tunnels: the only Mach 8 quiet wind tunnel in the world and the hypersonic pulse (HYPULSE) reflected shock/expansion tunnel. HARF also houses the Hypersonics Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center (HAMTC), a single location for industry partners to work on materials and manufacturing innovations and provide access to testing capabilities.
The tunnels recreate different scenarios, such as spacecraft re-entry or missile flight through the atmosphere, as well as replicating unique engine conditions for extremely high-speed propulsion. The Mach 8 quiet wind tunnel and the HYPULSE tunnel offer controlled environments to research several facets of high-speed flight. The wind tunnel more closely simulates flight and provides more accurate data than conventional hypersonic wind tunnels.
The HYPULSE tunnel uses a shock wave of high-temperature air to recreate specific hypersonic flight conditions. It allows flight simulations at speeds ranging from Mach 5 to as high as Mach 40. Purdue will be only the second U.S. university to offer HYPULSE test capabilities.
At HAMTC, researchers can collaborate with industry partners to develop materials and manufacturing innovations. HAMTC is the only vertically integrated prototyping center in the nation that enables the design, manufacturing, joining and testing of hypersonic components and subsystems in one location, speeding time from concept to full-fledged product.
Intrathecal delivery entails the injection of drugs into the fluid that fills the space between thin layers of tissue that cover the brain and spinal cord. Physicians use the route of administration to treat cancers that have spread, or may spread, to the cerebrospinal fluid.
Lilly entered into a five-year, $52-million research collaboration with the university in 2017. That agreement positioned the drugmaker to tap into Purdue’s expertise to improve delivery of injectable medicines. Lilly identified the university as a potential enabler of its goals of reducing pain, decreasing the number of injections, and enabling better patient compliance and overall health.
The $50 million commitment to the Purdue research collaboration is part of a broader $92.5 million pact with the university that includes pharmaceutical manufacturing scholarships.
“The number of people who may benefit from our innovative medicines continues to increase, we are investing to advance critical research and build a more diverse pipeline of talent in Indiana,” said David A. Ricks, Lilly’s chair and CEO and Purdue Industrial Management alum.
Purdue and Lilly have a historic relationship, dating back to the organizations’ founding years. Those collaborative research efforts have helped advance understanding of the physiology of drug delivery and develop technologies to improve delivery of pharmaceuticals for better patient outcomes and experiences.
Purdue researchers include Pavlos Vlachos, the St. Vincent Health Professor of Healthcare Engineering and director of the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering in the School of Mechanical Engineering; Yoon Yeo, associate department head of industrial and physical pharmacy and the Lillian Barboul Thomas Professor of Industrial and Physical Pharmacy and Biomedical Engineering; and Luis Solario, associate professor of biomedical engineering.
The new center for Transportation Cybersecurity and Resiliency (TraCR), led by Clemson University, is the first national security center funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). TraCR will receive $20 million from the DOT over a five-year grant period.
UTCs will help the next generation of transportation professionals make roads, bridges, rail, shipping and airspace safer, more innovative and more efficient. The centers — 34 of which received grant awards up to $435 million in February — advance transportation expertise and technology in the varied disciplines that comprise the field of transportation through education, research and technology transfer activities, according to the DOT release.
Satish Ukkusuri, the Reilly Professor of Civil Engineering, will lead Purdue’s center. Other members of the Purdue team include Dongyan Xu, the Samuel D. Conte Professor of Computer Science and director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS); Berkay Celik, assistant professor of computer science; Yiheng Feng, assistant professor of civil engineering; Aniket Kate, associate professor of computer science; and Vaneet Aggarwal, professor of industrial engineering.
“With increasing connectivity, electrification and autonomy of transportation systems, the TraCR center will lead to world-changing research in transportation cybersecurity in connected and autonomous transportation systems, electric vehicles, and supply chains, and will develop algorithms, testing and tools that will defend the next-generation transportation systems,” Ukkusuri said. “The research will develop not only mitigation methods but also anticipatory techniques advancing transportation cybersecurity. The center builds on the significant strengths of the Purdue transportation research, education and workforce development over the years.”
TraCR will continuously monitor and address the vulnerabilities of cybersecurity associated with transportation cyber-physical-social systems (TCPSS). These systems use computations and communication embedded in and interacting with physical processes to add new capabilities to transportation systems.
Researchers will work on identifying challenges and threats across transportation modes, geographies, and applications, as well as pioneering advanced cybersecurity strategies and solutions for multimodal transportation.
The researchers expect to develop software and hardware that will function as the crucial backbone for preventing and mitigating potential cyberattacks on transportation systems, such as data falsification and Global Positioning System (GPS) spoofing attacks. Wirelessly connecting vehicles to each other (vehicle-to-vehicle) and to the roadway infrastructure (vehicle-to-infrastructure) holds the promise of reducing gridlock, crashes, fuel use, emissions, and social inequities. However, it also introduces vulnerabilities that need to be mitigated and anticipated. With every vehicle and piece of infrastructure that connects to the internet, there is opportunity to steal data, invade privacy, demand a ransom, generate misinformation, or even shut down a whole system.
One of Purdue’s key contributions will be to ascertain the network-level impact of cyberattacks on connected and autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, and ride-hailing systems. The research team will develop quantum computing-based algorithms to anticipate and mitigate vulnerabilities in the transportation system. Testing will take place in real-world scenarios and on simulation platforms, both of which will be designed and developed by Purdue researchers.
Additional partnering institutions are Benedict College, Florida International University, Morgan State University, South Carolina State University, the University of Alabama, the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Texas at Dallas.
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