NextFlex News – July 2023

Dear Members and Colleagues,

Dr. John Williams of Boeing introduces the keynote presentation by Teri Finchamp, VP Future Production System Engineering, at Boeing.

NextFlex convened the hybrid electronics community June 27-28 at the Boeing manufacturing facility in Tukwila, WA, where 70 attendees from industry, academia, and government met to hear subject matter experts provide updates on hybrid electronics commercialization opportunities and challenges. The workshop opened with an overview of the state of the art in aviation and aerospace by Dr. John Williams of Boeing. This set the stage for three sessions on specific areas where opportunities for hybrid electronics are greatest.

Session Two panelists, moderated by Andrew Kwas, answer questions from the audience.

The first session, Aviation and Atmospheric Flight, chaired by Tom Rovere of Lockheed Martin, focused on the status of adoption of hybrid electronics-enabled technologies into atmospheric flight applications with presentations on near term opportunities for UAVs, hypersonics, high temperature applications, and electronic warfare. The second session on Space Applications, chaired by Andrew Kwas of Northrop Grumman, focused on the rapidly growing commercial space industry with presentations on critical requirements for manufacturing space applications as well as for manufacturing in space. The third and final session examined the opportunities raised in the first two sessions though the lens of Commercialization with a mix of perspectives from academia, OSD ManTech, product developers with existing technology releases, and both small and large companies.

The workshop concluded with member-only breakout sessions designed to generate a functional plan to commercialize hybrid electronics technologies by bringing together the full value chain for aviation and space applications as well as Industrial IoT asset monitoring.

Attendees reported being highly satisfied with the workshop presentations, the breakout sessions, and the networking with peers and subject matter experts. We hope you’ll join us for an upcoming workshop!

Sincerely,

Malcolm J. Thompson, Ph.D.
NextFlex Executive Director