Aerospace Hub Town Hall
January 18, 2024
1:00pm – 3:00pm MST
RSVP Here! 

We are excited to announce the launch of a new Aerospace Research Hub at the University of Utah! The Aerospace Hub is an interconnected group of faculties, research infrastructure, and administrative support for highly competitive research teams, cutting edge research capabilities, agile proposal development, and workforce development. As an initial vision, it is expected that the Aerospace Hub will operate under four main pillars of focus: 

1. Convergent aerospace research to advance industry and government agencies. 
2. Closely coupled, multidisciplinary teams across campus engaging funding and other resource building opportunities for Hub expansion. 
3. Education and workforce development. 
4. Technology transition to support product development. 

To that end, we will be hosting an Aerospace Hub Town Hall to collect community inputs on the future of the Hub. There will be a brief overview presentation by the Aerospace Hub leadership, 47G leadership, and a NASA Chief Engineer regarding current plans and collaborations for the hub. We will end the town hall event with a community input and brainstorming session. The brainstorming session will be focused on by the key guiding questions found below. Please note that the discussion will engage these questions and questions/topics from participants.  

The Town Hall will take place on January 18th, 2024 from 1:00pm – 3:00pm (MST). This is an in-person event only – there will be no virtual option or recording of this event. Please plan to attend in-person to learn more about the Hub and share your feedback. Please RSVP for this in-person retreat by Friday, January 5th, 2024. RSVP is required to ensure a room with adequate seating can be arranged. RSVPs are accepted HERE. Note: You will be asked to login to your UofU Google Workspace OR another Gmail account to complete your RSVP due to technical constraints of the system.  

To maximize available time for this event, lightning talks from researchers will be held at a future Aerospace Hub networking event. For this Town Hall, attendees are encouraged to provide a 1-slide (maximum) description of research expertise/interests/perspective and how they relate to Aerospace research. A template for this slide is provided HERE. These slides will be shared at the event and will be used to build an initial roster of researchers for the Hub. The slide should be uploaded alongside your RSVP to the event OR provided to the VPR Office by the RSVP deadline (1/5/24).  

Questions can be directed to the VPR Office. Thank you.   

Aerospace Town Hall – Guiding Questions 

1. What are the frontier and interdisciplinary research topics the Aerospace Hub should focus on in its initial work. These can be research topics that are exclusive to the realm of Aerospace research and/or areas of research that would benefit from collaboration/coordination with Aerospace research. 
2. What operational structure is recommended/preferred?  
3. What community structure is recommended/preferred? 
4. How can the Hub best initiate and support center-level or high-impact grant proposals? 
5. Which entities/units/groups should be affiliated with the Hub? These can be entities/units/groups that are internal to the University of Utah or potential external partners.  
6. What state-level efforts should the Hub propose/initiate?  
7. What critical components, elements, considerations, etc. are currently missing from the Hub structure?