This was the first formal meeting of all AMTAS academic and industrial partners. A total of thirty persons attended the meeting, including at least one person from each of the four academic members and eight of the original nine industrial members of AMTAS. If you would like contact information for any attendee, please contact Ellen Barker.
The morning hours were devoted to introductions. Brief welcoming remarks were provided by Mr. Kurt Beckett (Deputy Chief of Staff, Office of Sen. Maria Cantwell), Prof. Denice Denton (Dean of the College of Engineering at the UW), and by Profs. Bruce Adee, Adam Bruckner, and Raj Bordia (Chairs of the UW Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Materials Science and Engineering, respectively).
Prof. Mark Tuttle, AMTAS Director, next described the Center’s overall administrative structure and management. Other university faculty then provided brief summaries of the university/college they represent. This included Profs. Kuen Lin and Jim Seferis (UW), Prof. Lloyd Smith (Washington State University), Prof. Tim Kennedy (Oregon State University), and Mr. Charlie Seaton (Edmonds Community College).
A member of the AMTAS industrial partners then briefly introduced the company they represented. These introductions included company size and location, products produced by the company, experience with composites, etc. Presentations were made by Steve Coe (Boeing), Bob Diaz (Triumph Composite Systems), Nobuyuki Odagiri (Toray Composites-America), Spencer Furch (Hexcel Composites), Bob LaMantea (Intec), Clive Rees (Composite Solutions), Jason Scharf (Northwest Composites), and Howard Banasky (Heatcon). Bruce Hamilton of Stoddard International could not attend the meeting due to a last-minute conflict. Therefore, Mark Tuttle made a brief introduction of Stoddard using overheads that had been prepared by Bruce.
The overheads used during many of the morning presentations are available here.
The afternoon portion of the meeting was devoted to a discussion of research or educational projects that could be undertaken by AMTAS during the next year. Mark Tuttle first provided a review of the projects that had been described in the proposal, which reflected the needs contained in the original Solicitation for Proposal released by the FAA in October 2003.
A wide-ranging discussion of these projects commenced. Each industrial member presented then provided a letter “score” to each area. A topic judged to be of high importance/priority was rated “H,” one of medium importance/priority was rated “M,” and one of low importance/priority was rated “L.” If a member had no expertise in a given area, they reported a score of “none”. This information was later transmitted to the FAA Program Manager Curt Davies, as an indication of the priorities of the industrial partners of AMTAS.