NASA on Campus

This month, in a new partnership with universities, NASA is establishing seven University Research, Engineering, and Technology Institutes. Each URETI, consisting of three dozen or so researchers from as many as 11 universities, will get roughly $3 million a year for five years. The Department of Defense may contribute to some of the institutes.

The URETIs will undertake research and educational activities in specific areas of long-term strategic interest to NASA. The areas are aerospace propulsion and power, led by the Georgia Institute of Technology; the intersection of bio-, nano-, and information technology, led by UCLA; nanoelectronics and computing, led by Purdue University; third-generation reusable launch vehicles, with two separate URETIs, led by the University of Florida, Gainesville, and the University of Maryland, College Park; and bio- and nanomaterials and structures for aerospace vehicles, again with two institutes, led by Princeton and Texas A&M universities.

The lifetime of the URETIs can be extended once, to a total of 10 years, and additional institutes will be selected every two or three years, says program architect Michael Reischman. The new institutes are loosely modeled on research centers that NASA set up in the late 1980s but that were phased out a few years later, he adds. “NASA sees the URETIs as a component of their overall plan to reengage and reenergize the intellectual horsepower in the nation’s academic community.