NextFlex News – November 2021

Greetings NextFlex Members and Friends,

We have good news to share!

First, Pradeep Lall of Auburn University reported that work based on NextFlex’s Project Call 5.6 was presented in a poster entitled, “Effect of Fold Diameter on State of Health Degradation of Li-Ion Batteries Subjected to U-flex-to-Install and Dynamic U-Fold Testing.” What’s wonderful is that the poster won the 2021 Nasser Grayeli Outstanding Paper Award at the recent ASME InterPACK Conference held last month. We are always delighted when members present work based upon learning they’ve achieved through projects at NextFlex. This project, led by Auburn University and supported by Flex and ITN Energy Systems, sought to develop test protocols for direct comparison of performance and reliability of various flexible power sources. This foundational work is critically important to the widespread adoption and commercialization of flexible hybrid electronics. Congratulations to the project team and the Auburn University presenters!

Secondly, John Williams of Boeing just let us know that he will be promoted to Technical Fellow of The Boeing Company on January 3, 2022. The NextFlex team is thrilled at this news. John is one of our outstanding contributors to projects, meetings, and events, and we thoroughly enjoy working with him. This achievement is well deserved, and I hope you’ll join me in congratulating John.

Our team is busy making plans for activities early in 2022 as we are hopeful that we can resume in-person meetings and events. First, our Technical Working Groups are actively updating each of their respective Manufacturing Roadmaps to develop topics for the upcoming Project Call 7.0 which will be released in Q1 2022. Following the release of PC 7.0 we will hold a series of meetings March 1-3 to include a PC 7.0 Teaming Event and Proposer’s Day, a Technical Council Meeting, and a workshop. Please mark your calendars!

Speaking of in-person events, we have two coming up next month. First, we’ll be exhibiting with member Universal Instruments at SEMICON West on December 7-9 in San Francisco. We very much appreciate Universal’s inviting us to participate with them, and we look forward to meeting a lot of new people at the show. Universal will be displaying equipment like the tool we have in-house at NextFlex. The following week, December 13-16, we’ll be exhibiting with the other Department of Defense Innovation Institutes at the Defense Manufacturing Conference in Aurora, CO. I’ll be a panelist at the Manufacturing Roundtable on Tuesday, December 14, Carly Colvin will present a poster on “Closing the Advanced Manufacturing Interest and Awareness Gap” on Wednesday, December 15, and Scott Miller will participate in a panel on “Future DoD Printed Circuit Board Requirements” on Thursday, December 16. Hope to see you at one of these upcoming events.

Wishing you and your friends and family a warm and wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

Sincerely,

Malcolm J. Thompson, PhD
Executive Director