Assessing NASA's University Leadership Initiative (2021)

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4 The Aviation Industry’s Perception of ULI and the Advantages and Disadvantages of Its Role as a ULI Team Member The ULI program is designed to provide university faculty with leadership to create teams to solve complex problems of high interest to NASA by leveraging interdisciplinary colleagues and students at their own and partner institutions. Funded projects include industry partners, who provide real-world connections for the university participants (faculty and students) and are intended to be the beneficiaries of the knowledge gained via the project to maintain U.S. competitiveness in aviation systems design. The committee used the following three sources of information to assess industry perceptions, advantages, and disadvantages of ULI: 1. Industry partners on current ULI projects, 2. Industry representatives who were not on ULI projects, and 3. Published workforce reports about the aviation industry. AVIATION INDUSTRY PERCEPTIONS In its meeting with several project leads, the committee heard from their industry partners about their participation in ULI projects. The committee also heard from industry representatives who were not involved in ULI. University faculty involved with ULI noted that the project management and internships provided by their industry partners were beneficial. The ULI industry partners lauded the ULI project’s human resources dimensions. Industry partners reported that ULI connected them to university faculty and students, including having access to a high-quality pool of students for internship opportunities and for graduate-level students for their own research organizations. Such partners suggested that these human resource interactions were of high value to them. ULI ADVANTAGES FOR INDUSTRY Industry representatives not involved with ULI spoke about long-term trends in workforce needs and cited programs such as ULI as important to provide engineers both at the undergraduate and graduate 19 

20 ASSESSING NASA’S UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE levels. An aviation workforce expert reported on her 20 years of experience with workforce and student surveys sponsored by Aviation Week. She and other industry representatives indicated that students’ exposure to research projects such as ULI is valuable for building subject-matter expertise and general skills sought by the industry. Workforce experts also cited survey findings that students of all backgrounds are interested in the discovery opportunities available via the ULI program, suggesting that the program holds promise for meeting industry needs for a diverse workforce, which has not shown much demographic change in the past 20 years. For example, the relative percentage of women and African Americans in the aerospace industry has not changed over that period. In addition to the perceptions about ULI’s human resources aspects, the content of projects funded by the program was highlighted by another aviation industry representative who recently chaired a National Academies study on AAM.1 He noted that a number of the recommendations in the committee’s final report would be excellent subjects for future ULI projects. For example, he said that within the aerospace field, electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles were a significantly expanding market. This aviation segment offers many opportunities for entrepreneurship and business start-ups because the barriers to entry are lower as eVTOL aircraft can be significantly less complex than traditional aerospace vehicles. This industry representative suggested that eVTOL would be an excellent area for ULI to engage with for these reasons, as well as the high level of excitement that it is currently generating among students and young engineers. Both industry representatives further noted that while large aerospace companies have long supported graduate-level research among their own employees, this support has been eroding with shrinking profit margins in aerospace. Similarly, basic research, which has also been challenged within industry by changing business practices, was also cited as a key benefit of ULI. ULI and similar programs provide long-term stability that is beneficial to U.S. aerospace. As a result, these industry representatives stated, programs like ULI are increasingly important for providing the high-level engineering skills that industry needs but is less likely to support. The Aviation Week Workforce Study Executive Summary, also reviewed by the committee, indicated that there was robust interest in upskilling, learning, and tuition reimbursement, although the uptake of tuition reimbursement has declined in recent years.2 The aviation workforce expert indicated that new graduates are especially interested in alternative ways of upskilling and learning beyond formal degree programs at higher education institutions. Hence, the persistent connections between industry and academia fostered by programs like ULI also hold forth promise of providing such alternative means of upskilling within the context of collaborative research. ULI DISADVANTAGES FOR INDUSTRY The committee did not hear evidence about specific disadvantages experienced by industry participants in the ULI program. Industry participants’ and experts’ perceptions of the ULI program were focused on the benefits and positive views of the program. However, two ways in which industry expectations of the program were not being entirely met represent ULI program disadvantages by omission. This section will discuss ways that NASA’s ULI program could answer industry’s workforce needs and enhance participation by a broader set of industry partners in the technology transfer process. Diversity (e.g., gender and ethnicity) of the student participants in ULI is not currently known, but it would be useful for industry to strategize about internship programs that might be successful in addressing workforce diversity needs. For example, the aviation workforce expert noted that undergraduate African American students carry higher post-graduation debt and that about half work while pursuing their degrees. Such realities pose challenges for their ability to participate in research 1 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2020, Advancing Aerial Mobility: A National Blueprint, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, https://doi.org/10.17226/25646. 2 Aviation Week Network, “2019 Workforce Study Executive Summary,” https://pgs.aviationweek.com/workforcereport, accessed September 22, 2020. 

THE AVIATION INDUSTRY’S PERCEPTION OF ULI—ITS ROLE AS A ULI TEAM MEMBER 21 projects, which are critical for building subject-matter and general skills in demand by the aviation industry. While some employers use debt-forgiveness to attract students, programs like ULI could be more supportive of industry needs to diversify the aviation workforce via support for students during their undergraduate programs. The technology transfer process is central to the ULI mission and a benefit highlighted as important by ULI industry partners and non-partner industry experts alike. As such, the ULI program offers an opportunity for NASA to better understand its role in facilitating technology transfer, especially in the potential for speeding the process of the transition from basic to applied research to the market. Additionally, firms involved in aviation innovation have become more heterogeneous. While the committee heard from aviation industry ULI partners employed by large, well-established firms, the role of newer firms, start-ups, and other possible partners was unclear. Additionally, workforce experts indicated that new entrants to the aviation workforce are particularly interested in entrepreneurship, for example. In this regard, if such firms are not participating in ULI, NASA may be missing an important engine of innovation. (This is further discussed in Chapter 5.) FINDING: Industry participants in ULI projects cited the access to human and intellectual resources (i.e., faculty and students) as a benefit of ULI. FINDING: Diversity of the aviation workforce (in terms of women and minority participation) has not changed markedly in 20 years. Industry workforce experts indicated that programs like ULI can be helpful in addressing this long-standing workforce diversity challenge. ULI could potentially assist industry in identifying potential minority and women engineers to serve their workforce needs. FINDING: NASA was not able to provide information about the demographic composition of the students (postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate) nor researchers (faculty and industry partner researchers) who participated in ULI projects beyond the observation that none of the projects, to date, had a woman as project director. FINDING: ULI’s emphasis on basic research was cited by industry representatives as of benefit to them. However, the robust research literature about the government role in technology transfer processes was not discussed by NASA during committee meetings. NASA was unable to describe how it would capture information about the technology transfer process, which is a central principle of the ULI program within ARMD. NASA may not be getting the feedback it requires from industry to make future ULI programmatic adjustments in its role as a federal facilitator of the innovation process. RECOMMENDATION: NASA should analyze demographic data (recommended in Chapter 2) about ULI participants (faculty, postdocs, and students at all levels), along with data on who is supported by ULI, to communicate about ULI’s human resources with the aerospace industry. This NASA analysis should include determining those to whom support is provided for their studies (e.g., internship opportunities, paid research assistantships, travel support to present at conferences) and identify potential gaps in support. This information (including data from the aviation industry) should be made public on the ULI webpage. RECOMMENDATION: NASA should assess the research collaborations among ULI faculty, students, industry partners of various types (both established companies and start-ups), and government collaborators to determine how these collaborations are forged, persist, and result in transferring knowledge across the three sectors (i.e., academia, industry, and government). NASA should consult the research literature and other federal agencies involved with technology transfer to identify data it should collect to answer the following question: What is 

22 ASSESSING NASA’S UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE the role of government organizations in knowledge transfer? This would enable NASA to make data-based decisions about programmatic changes to enhance innovation.