COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Texas A&M is putting itself at the forefront of hypersonic research.
The university’s experiment station is partnering with Lockheed Martin Corporation to work on more projects across many different fields. The corporation has already been partnering with the university and now this recent agreement will allow for deeper research in fields including hypersonics, cyber and directed energy, and autonomy.
“This is a preferred partner agreement. Lockheed Martin has only done this with a handful of universities across the country. It opens up avenues for sponsored research between Lockheed Martin and TAMU,” Dr. Joe Elabd, Associate Dean For Research At College Of Engineering at Texas A&M said.
Dr. Elabd said the partnership with Lockheed Martin is a rare opportunity.
“Lockheed Martin is number one company for national defense worldwide and hypersonics is probably one of their top priorities to make fighter jets for the military to defend our nation and so the research that is happening at TAMU is really one of a kind in hypersonics,” he said.
The collaboration of these two research powerhouses will focus on building even more research facilities across the university and advance the research and applied research much quicker.
“A&M, definitely under the leadership of Banks, has positioned us in a unique way to do national security defense research, particularly leveraging the space at the Rellis campus, we’ve brought in many resources from the department of defense including the army future’s command and so I think as the facilities grow, at the Rellis campus and we get even more investments there and the department of defense will continue, the funding will grow there”
This initial agreement is five years, but Dr. Elabd said it can be renewed later down the line.
“There’s still so much to learn in hypersonics research, not just for a national defense but also for space, space exploration so I’m really excited,” he said. “It’s phenomenal just to think about what could happen if you could do the type of experiments that we are going to do here at the rellis campus.”
Dr. Elabd said as the facilities continue to grow across the university, the school will gain more investments and sponsorship as well.
Much of the projects and research will be conducted at a recent 200 million dollar Bush Combat Development Project.