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Positioning DoD and Its Workforce for New or Expanded Areas

Teresa Clement, Raytheon Technologies, introduced Dan Miracle, Senior Scientist in the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), who spoke about how the Department of Defense (DoD) can use the collaboration insights learned during the COVID-19 pandemic to advance future DoD needs. Following Miracle’s talk, Clement moderated a panel discussion on positioning DoD and its workforce for new or expanded areas. Panelists were Ajay Malshe, the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University; Katsuyo Thornton, the L.H. and F.E. Van Vlack Professor of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan; and Jack Beuth, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the NextManufacturing Center at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

THE NEXT-GENERATION AIR FORCE WORKFORCE

Dan Miracle, Air Force Research Laboratory

When COVID-19 hit, AFRL was in the process of implementing several large-scale changes to address current workforce challenges. Miracle described the past, present, and future of the organization’s efforts to create a more diverse and innovative workforce.

Past Efforts

AFRL has periodically revamped its workforce initiatives since its inception more than 100 years ago. For example, raises, previously based entirely on seniority, are now determined by contributions. Past efforts also drove an increased emphasis on intellectual and emotional health and created more opportunities for junior researchers to pursue professional advancement, a reflection of similar measures across the DoD landscape to prioritize employee support, outreach, and collaborative learning. Miracle shared that he personally benefited from many of these opportunities during his career.

Today, AFRL has about 11,000 employees, mostly in science and technology (S&T), and $5 billion in annual spending. One of its workforce goals is to build a multidisciplinary culture; to that end, it hosted the first AFRL-wide technology conference in 2020 (as a virtual event). In addition, AFRL instituted a program to share inspirational or innovative TED-style talks organization-wide.

Recent diversity and inclusion initiatives also include the creation of the Air Force Women in Science and Engineering professional development seminars, more accessible advertising and hiring practices, and training in management skills for supervisors from scientific backgrounds. Most of these programs were initiated a few years ago, but Miracle said COVID-19 has actually accelerated their progress because of the widespread embrace of digital collaboration tools.

Future Goals

AFRL’s future goals are outlined in its S&T 2030 strategy,¹ which envisions a thorough overhaul of its workforce approaches guided by a holistic life-cycle view of all employees. To advance these goals, AFRL created a high-level, strategic human capital position to integrate multiple workforce functions, such as outreach and internships that had previously been separate. The organization also partnered with a future-focused consultancy to identify and access 2030 workplace needs. AFRL is also initiating a stronger physical presence for its overseas laboratories to identify and harness overseas talent.

Miracle highlighted several challenges to achieving AFRL’s workforce goals. First, the percentage of worldwide research and development (R&D) sponsored by DoD has dropped from 36 percent in the 1960s to 4 percent today. Second, talented foreign students are increasingly opting to attend non-U.S. schools. Third, AFRL’s internal, technology-specific organization has led to a tribal mentality that

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¹ U.S. Air Force, 2019, Science and Technology Strategy: Strengthening USAF Science and Technology for 2030 and Beyond, April, https://cdn.afresearchlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/13192817/AirForce-Science-and-Technology-Strategy.pdf.

impedes multidisciplinary work. Also, cutting-edge R&D work is being off-shored. Underlying all of these factors are the inherent challenges any organization faces when attempting to turn aspirations into successful cultural changes.

Miracle also pointed to some broader S&T workforce challenges. First, the current focus on technical skills ignores the need for “soft skills” such as agile learning, smart risk taking, and an openness to rapid change. In addition, the traditional S&T mindset has biases that hamper technological application work, such as the belief that research is always slow or that basic research must be separated from application potential. Miracle suggested an intellectual bridge to reframe these biases, akin to Pasteur’s Quadrant.² AFRL plans to create mandatory training in soft skills such as professionalism, intellectual honesty, motivation, self-awareness, and active listening. In addition, he urged universities to develop strategies to teach these skills alongside the sciences and suggested that organizations would benefit from learning how to recognize and recruit people who possess these skills.

Despite the challenges, Miracle stressed that AFRL strongly believes that the right workforce, with the right support, will advance the mission of developing innovative, affordable warfighting solutions.

MATERIALS, MANUFACTURING, AND SOCIETY

Ajay Malshe, Purdue University

Malshe highlighted key challenges to materials and manufacturing workforce development in the age of “Industry 4.0,” where the data revolution is integrated into every aspect of manufacturing. One is that innovations are emerging at “warp speed” and require their own manufacturing supply chain ecosystem, which makes training essential, continuous, and partly quickly obsolete. Also, techno-socioeconomic inequity and inequality are creating a situation in which some populations are increasingly finding themselves shut out of technology and workplace opportunities. Companies like Tesla and Apple are booming, but their many products are unaffordable and/or inaccessible for a large proportion of the population, Malshe noted. In creating innovative products, he urged developers to ask themselves: Who am I making this product for, and are engineering innovations purposeful and accessible to the larger cross-section of society?

Materials science enables innovations because one material can be engineered in countless ways. This flexibility places materials at the convergence of the current digital, three-dimensional, additive manufacturing (AM) revolution, where it is possible to create a complete, and completely flexible, manufacturing platform.

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² D.E. Stokes, 1997, Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation, Washington, DC, Brookings Institution Press.

Malshe’s group at Purdue is planning to build such a platform, but the challenge is to do so without knowing what it will be used to manufacture in the future and so how to design it. This necessitates a shift from readiness to resilience, and from efficiency to effectiveness—where agile, precise, endlessly reconfigurable, data-filled, and integrated platforms can handle heterogeneous materials, processes, systems, and sizes to deliver reliable results.

To create truly revolutionary technologies, Malshe said scientists and engineers have to “learn how to learn” as a continuous and lifelong process, and how to look outside of the classroom. For example, he and his team are learning from nature’s more than 8 million species to design materials and processes—for example, the functionality of snakeskin for precise locomotion for soft robots or the resiliency of a dandelion for survival. While attracting and training the right workforce for this work is difficult, he suggested that a bigger challenge is whether society is ready for this higher level of technology. He noted that citizens, including some students, have a deep distrust of technology and institutions, as evident during COVID-19 in the context of trust and masking, and are frustrated with persistent and escalating inequity gaps. With an increasing focus on global equity issues, many are questioning whether the “American Dream” is worth attaining. As a result, he posited that 20th-century models—like textbooks, homework, and multimillion-dollar research centers (that study techno-socio-economic innovations as an academic exercise for publishing or patenting rather than for bridging inequity and inequality gaps by immersion)—are less and less relevant. While schools want to recruit the right students, he suggested it is possible that they are not ready or willing to be recruited as the country ponders, quo vadimus: where are we going?

IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC ON MATERIALS SCIENCE EDUCATION AND FUTURE WORKFORCE

Katsuyo Thornton, University of Michigan

Thornton spoke about the potential for computational materials science (CMS) to accelerate materials science and engineering advancements and discussed related education and workforce issues. She has administered surveys to gauge the growth of CMS in the field and worked to create a workforce pipeline by integrating CMS into undergraduate studies through courses, materials, and outreach programs. She also founded the Summer School for Integrated Computational Materials Education,³ held annually since 2011, which trains faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students on implementing computational modules into core courses.

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³ See University of Michigan, “Summer School for Integrated Computational Materials Education,” Michigan Engineering, https://icmed.engin.umich.edu.

Thornton highlighted several benefits of training the future materials science and engineering workforce in computational approaches. First, it can reinforce or illuminate key theoretical understandings, creating a workforce that can better apply this deeper knowledge of fundamental concepts. Second, simulations can supplement and complement laboratory work, especially during COVID-19 shutdowns. Third, modeling provides scientists necessary training in complex problem-solving and algorithmic thinking. Finally, materials science is starting to incorporate data science components, and a solid basis in computational skills will enable the workforce to take advantage of the world’s growing computational power.

CMS education is well-suited to online learning and may be delivered through asynchronous instruction, so when COVID-19 hit, it was not as disruptive to CMS as it was for other fields, Thornton said. Pre-recorded, self-paced lectures worked well. Although some students found it challenging to learn on their own, she posited that this is likely to be a beneficial skill in the long run. With laboratories closed, computational work and simulated experiments became more appealing, and remote technology facilitated new collaborations among computational scientists, theorists, and experimentalists.

Concluding, Thornton posited that it is likely that some upsides of pandemic-imposed disruptions will become permanent, which could help diversify the workforce and further accelerate the integration of CMS into materials science education.

DOD ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING RESEARCH AT CARNEGIE MELLON AND IMPACTS OF COVID-19

Jack Beuth, Carnegie Mellon University

CMU’s NextManufacturing Center advances AM technologies with state-of-the-art equipment, more than 25 interdisciplinary researchers, and robust outreach and workforce training programs. Beuth gave an overview of the center’s work and its experience during COVID-19.

NextManufacturing conducts many projects at the intersection of industry, academia, and government needs. One, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research and led by Lockheed Martin, is to understand the characterization process to create large-scale welding machines to automate rapid parts production. Other projects include evaluations of automated metal-AM consolidated parts, integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning into AM to increase production scales, and using machine learning to learn from high-speed melt pool imaging.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the center was completely shut down for 3 months. After reopening with strict virus-control protocols in place, work is proceeding, but much more slowly than before. Consortium funding dipped slightly, and

the industry’s key need, AM workforce talent, is currently stalled in their education. Beuth said the biggest loss has been the lack of opportunities for in-person teamwork and exchange of ideas, which is difficult to replicate remotely and a key part of the way graduate students learn mechanical engineering and machine learning skills.

At the same time, Beuth pointed to some positive developments he sees arising from pandemic-imposed changes. For example, he said traditional disciplinary siloes have become less rigid, and multidisciplinary learning and collaboration have risen. Long-distance collaborations have been either unaffected or actually strengthened through the widespread adoption of videoconferencing tools. And many educational strategies for remote learning, including pre-recorded lectures and remote collaboration tools, have been effective.

PANEL Q&A DISCUSSION

Clement and Ned Thomas, Texas A&M University, moderated an open discussion that covered how universities are responding to multiple changes, curiosity as a critical skill, and learning from entrepreneurship.

Institutional Change

Thomas asked panelists to discuss how institutions of higher education have adopted and responded to changes happening on many fronts, including implications of remote technology, multidisciplinary work, and computational advancements. Beuth replied that in his view, academics are frequently resistant to innovation, especially when it concerns curricula. At CMU, however, computational skills, machine learning, and other new technologies are prioritized alongside hands-on manufacturing experiences. He emphasized the benefits of breaking down disciplinary siloes, especially since companies increasingly want workers with broad, agile learning capabilities. Experiments and simulations provide different insights and are taught separately, but multidisciplinary learning is the key, he said.

Building on Beuth’s points, Clement said this type of multidisciplinary learning provides the breadth of knowledge industry employers seek. She suggested the materials community can work to define, enable, and share this core knowledge with the future materials science workforce. Thornton added that computational skills integrate well into curricula, especially if they are taught alongside theory and experiments. Seeing simulations and experiments side-by-side helps students gain important insights and understanding, including an appreciation for the fact that computational models are not perfect.

A challenge specific to academic collaborations with the defense sector is secure communication. Miracle noted that remote research poses important information technology security concerns for DoD.

Curiosity as a Skill

Malshe asserted that schools could also teach students the critical skill of how to engage their curiosity, which he sees as the root of all learning. He asked participants to envision a multidisciplinary class on curiosity, where the dots are collected before they are connected.

Miracle agreed that curiosity was a critical soft skill for today’s workforce. At CMU, Beuth noted that undergraduates have design projects to give them problem-solving experience and engage their curiosity and creativity, and Thornton added that COVID-19 forced many schools to pivot from exams to projects, which can also help ignite curiosity.

Malshe also commented that researchers may focus on what problems are being solved for truly impacting society, before and after responding to national initiatives. Publications or patents and their citations are becoming a large measure of academic impact, although engineering is practicing science to advance the quality of life for most, he argued.

Learning from Entrepreneurship

Building on this discussion, Naresh Thadhani, Georgia Institute of Technology, raised the importance of experiential learning and its relationship to entrepreneurialism. Many schools are creating entrepreneurship contests to teach problem solving, and several materials science and engineering students at his institution have done well in these contests, demonstrating the important role that materials play in leading technological innovations, he noted.

Malshe, an entrepreneur for many years, suggested that “frugal innovation” to lower investment risk and increase applicability should be more widely implemented. Miracle added that AFRL is focused on creating more affordable aircraft and noted that urgency can bring excitement and energy to a design problem.