SDSC to Participate in Obama Administration’s ‘Smart Manufacturing’ Initiative

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The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California San Diego will participate in a comprehensive national initiative announced by the White House this week to spur advances in digital process controls to improve the efficiency of U.S. manufacturing.

UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and UC Los Angeles are also participating in the program, which encompasses about 200 partners from 30 states representing a wide array of interests and expertise across industry and academia, to help accelerate the adoption of manufacturing technologies that also include advanced sensors and data analytics.

At a conference of global business leaders in Washington, D.C. earlier this week, President Obama announced the creation of a new $140 million Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII), to be headquartered at UCLA with a Berkeley-based regional center. The mission of the new institute will examine the pace of technology transfer between academia and industry, according to the White House announcement.

CESMII is part of the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition and operates in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy. In addition to the UCLA-based institute, President Obama announced that $800 million in federal and private money will go toward building five new manufacturing research centers across the country.

The Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute, headed by Jim Davis, UCLA's Vice Provost, Information Technology and Chief Academic Technology Officer, brings public-private investment from leading universities and manufacturers to develop smart sensors for use in advanced manufacturing. The Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC) will lead the new Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under a five-year award valued at $70 million.

A group headed by SDSC’s Chief Data Science Officer Ilkay Altintas is a member of the smart manufacturing platform team.

“Our partnership with CESMII builds upon our prior collaborative work with SMLC and will leverage SDSC’s expertise in data analytics, workflow systems, cloud, and high-performance computing platforms,” said Altintas.

The Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute is the ninth manufacturing hub awarded by the Obama Administration, and will focus on accelerating the development and adoption of advanced sensors, data analytics, and controls in manufacturing while reducing the cost of these technologies by half and improving the efficiency of U.S. advanced manufacturing.