Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, has created the Multidisciplinary Analysis and Design (MAD) Center for Advanced Vehicles to encourage faculty/industry dialogue and joint research in advanced vehicle design; additionally, MAD offers hands-on, industry-based graduate education in multidisciplinary engineering. State and federal funding currently focuses more on university-industry efforts than in the past. The MAD Center responds to governments' concerns that university research serve and inform industry's needs, and offers a program through which industries can take timely advantage of research.
Hands-on Graduate Student Design Research
While other programs in the college effectively prepare students as research specialists, industries also need broadly schooled engineers, competent in all aspects of design. Our new graduate design research degree answers this need by emphasizing interaction with industry, including a semester (for M.S. students) or two (for Ph.D. students) in residence with a company. University-industry projects take various forms; some with partial industry funding, mostly in the form of salaries for graduate students during site-based research. Others involve direct government agency funding for industrial and university activities. Some include company employees working towards a degree under the supervision of a faculty member. We include here the Japanese model, where most Ph.D. degrees are earned by industrial researchers who never become full-time graduate students.
MAD Advisory Board
The College and industry established an advisory board for the MAD Center, to help faculty and graduate students work productively with their industrial counterparts. Initial membership includes representatives of eight aerospace companies, a ship design company, and a major automobile maker. In addition, we have enlisted five NASA representatives for the board. The board passes information from member companies to faculty and graduate students about research areas needing attention, and, likewise, pass faculty proposals to industries to determine whether research topics answer at least one board member's needs. Once the board identifies a match between industrial needs and a faculty member's interest, the faculty member works to secure federal or state, partial or full, funding for the research project. The board will thus have almost complete control of the proposed MDF program. The board has met twice. We have followed their recommendations also exactly.
As its first project, the center put together a proposal to NASA for a graduate Multidisciplinary Design Fellowship (MDF) program. Along with 19 other universities, Virginia Tech won the first phase of $50,000 from NASA to create the center, its advisory board, and the proposal. The second phase MDF proposal asked for $200,000 per year for five years. NASA funded five such proposals from the 20 first- phase winners, and Virginia Tech was one of the winners.. The MAD center has a director and a faculty board that take into consideration two factors in deciding on the distribution of fellowships. The first is the recommendation of the industrial board; the second, the readiness of a company to provide the student working on the project with opportunities to spend adequate time on its premises with an industrial mentor. Virtually all of the money from NASA goes towards funding graduate student assistantships the board recommends.
Industrial Internship and Academic Program: The MAD Center awards a certificate for students who complete the program. In addition to performing MAD research, the MAD fellows are required to satisfy the degree requirements of his/her major department and complete MAD related course work which includes optimization, manufacturing and computer aided design courses. A unique feature of the program is the industrial internship opportunity. MAD fellows will spend at least three months, preferably six for Ph.D. students, in industry as an integral part of their graduate program working closely with an industrial partner on a MAD project. Exposure to non-academic design issues in an industrial environment provides an added dimension to the student's graduate program and emphasizes the interaction with industry. It is also a positive addition to the student's record, which will be a valuable asset in the eyes of future employers.
To learn more about the Mad Center, see our web page: