UT Research Park opens the door to innovation in the South

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Today, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville celebrated the grand opening of Innovation South, an 85,000-square-foot multi-use facility at UT Research Park at Cherokee Farm.

The facility will be the new expanded headquarters of the UTS Fibers and Composites Manufacturing Facility (FCMF), UTORNL Governor Chair UDAY Vaidya’s long-standing vision for advanced composites manufacturing.

Chancellor Donde Plowman speaks to the crowd during the opening of Innovation South. Image courtesy of Wes Hope/University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

“Innovation South” demonstrates UT’s ongoing commitment to co-locate our leading researchers with their industrial partners, rapidly transforming research findings into new products that strengthen and grow Tennessee’s innovation economy, said the UT Chancellor Donde Plowman. Professor Vaidya is one of our most prolific inventors. His work has attracted dozens of industry partners to Tennessee and has led to the creation of numerous high-tech startups that are creating jobs and opportunities in the region.

UT will occupy a 40,000-square-foot space and laboratory designed to support teams of faculty, students, and their industry collaborators as they work together to conceptualize, prototype, and test sustainable composite materials for advanced manufacturing applications, including precision agriculture, architecture, and automotive, among others.

Innovation South will also provide critical workforce training for Tennessees. High school, college, and technical and community college students, as well as workers seeking upskilling, will receive training in industry-relevant equipment and learn material design and evaluation, advanced manufacturing processes, and quality control.

This facility will be amazing for students of all skill levels, as they will get hands-on experience with everything the industry needs them to know, Vaidya said. We expect at least 50 graduate students and around 100 undergraduates in any given semester to work on research projects, in addition to around 15 postdocs and technical staff. Add to that mix 50 to 100 students and workers who come for training every year, it’s going to be a very dynamic space.

Design production

UT’s research in FCMF will design, manufacture, and test materials such as advanced composites created from low-cost fibers and fast-curing resins to produce value-added products for a range of industries such as automotive, wind, aerospace, marine, power, energy , sports and industrial applications. The work will cover basic research up to the scale of applied pre-commercialisation with the ultimate goal of creating cost-effective and usable solutions for industry.

Rendering courtesy of Partners Development and MBI Companies.

What will set the space apart is the ability to mix and match processes, allowing industry to explore new processes and thus scale rapidly while de-risking their operations.

If you look at the automotive sector today, there are fiberglass, carbon fiber, basalt and a range of different resin types that each require a process flow, Vaidya explained. The Innovative South facility will enable us to develop materials through design solutions that will save the cost, energy and manufacturing time of next generation products.

The equipment stations planned in FCMF will be physically located to mimic and test the entire value chain of industrial processes. They will include pellet production; sheet metal, compression and injection molding; large area additive manufacturing; automatic tape positioning; braiding and winding; laser cutting and preforming; shredding and recycling; and more.

We will have a process flow much like the industry, starting with the incoming material and going up gradually, Vaidya said. All the equipment here is threefold. There is research and development [research and development] mission, the workforce development mission, and the industry directives mission.

Faculty and students from UTs Tickle College of Engineering, College of Architecture and Design and Institute of Agriculture will all be in attendance.

The space is designed to invite faculty engagement on a larger scale: It will be a place where their ideas can be implemented and actualized to demonstrate what we can do with our industry partners, said Vaidya.

An ecosystem of partners

The expanded FCMF will enhance UT’s reputation for advanced materials and manufacturing excellence and provide a gateway for industry partners ready to collaborate on use-inspired projects.

One of the most distinctive features of Innovation South is the fact that it is truly a public-private partnership, said Tom Rogers, president of UT Research Park. About half of the building has been leased to partner organizations who will be able to work side-by-side with UT researchers and students on new innovations.

Innovation South will also serve as the new home for IACMI The Composites Institute, a consortium of more than 130 members of companies largely focused on the composites manufacturing industry.

IACMI is excited to locate our headquarters in Innovation South, said Chad Duty, CEO of IACMI and a UT professor of mechanical engineering. It will be a major focal point for regional synergy, providing unique opportunities for public-private collaboration to create commercial solutions in advanced composite manufacturing.

UT graduate student and fellow Volkswagen Joey Michaud speaks with guests at the inauguration of his research on composite structures. Image courtesy of Wes Hope/University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Not far from Innovation South in Knoxville’s Hardin Valley is the U.S. Department of Energy Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and UTs Manufacturing and Design Enterprise (TN-MADE), two locations of reference for the industry to collaborate with ORNL and UT Researchers on the design and development of new technologies and processes.

Vaidya sees the Innovation South facility integrating the businesses of MDF and TN-MADE and leveraging IACMI as a bridge between them.

Let’s cross-pollinate our efforts: The ecosystem isn’t isolated, it’s fully integrated, Vaidya said. The defining characteristic of all three is student access to the next generation workforce for the United States and the global economy and companies they will have.

In addition to UT and IACMI, other tenants slated to move to Innovation South include New Day Diagnostics, Trimble, the US Forest Service and Volkswagen Group of America. Volkswagen works closely with UT and ORNL on many joint projects through the Volkswagen Innovation Hub.

Innovation South is a project developed and owned by Partners Development.

CONTACT:

Christie Kennedy (865-974-8684, [email protected])

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