Comment: Student partnerships fuel aerospace innovation

These inventive collaborations yield technical breakthroughs while developing future talent. University partnerships bring fresh thinking to tough aviation problems. In my role overseeing surveillance hardware and engineering technology development at Acron, I've watched students tackle challenges that have sometimes proven difficult for even our most seasoned professionals. 

This year, the University of Arizona’s team created a passive thermal management system for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) avionics. This is a method of cooling electronic components without employing moving parts like fans, relying instead on materials and design to dissipate heat. This was a particularly challenging brief because UAM vehicles, commonly referred to as ‘flying taxis’ for cities, demand incredibly tight volume and weight constraints. Working within such limited conditions, the team eliminated fans by using heat pipes and a fin dissipation structure, a highly efficient heat transfer technology. In our customer-centric requirements focus, we pushed to eliminate a source of noise and reliability issues, the fan, and implement an analysis-driven design that enabled our electronics to be packaged in a density we’ve not achieved before.

The University of Arizona team built both a simulation model and a physical prototype that maintained acceptable component temperatures, even at extreme conditions of +70 °C; an operational temperature often encountered in compact avionic bays where electronic components generate large amounts of heat and have limited cooling capabilities to counteract this. The thermal management system was to work with a forthcoming surveillance innovation, a low-SWaP (size, weight, and power) version of Acron Aviation’s certified T3CAS radio.  The team’s innovative approach even won them an award through the University’s capstone program for ‘Most Unintuitive Design Driven by Physics’.

The Western Michigan University project was another eye opener. These students built a baro-inertial system from scratch using off-the-shelf components and their own software algorithms to provide accurate vertical velocity and position data. This is a highly complex task, requiring deep understanding of sensor fusion and calibration to achieve reliable performance. Their work was rigorous enough to be flight-tested aboard one of our company’s single-engine aircraft. Crucially, their work ended up feeding directly into our display and sensors product line technology roadmap, accelerating our progress in this critical area.

Then there's the University of South Florida team who designed and built a data access interface for a flight data recorder (or a "black box”, as they’re commonly known). The students produced a hardware prototype and developed supporting software, with one student continuing the research over the upcoming summer. This development now has significant potential to be added to our recorder product line roadmap, showcasing a direct path from university concept to potential commercial product.

Overcoming challenges

Of course, these collaborations aren't always smooth flying. We've hit our share of turbulence along the way. The most significant source of friction? Mismatched expectations. Our business teams sometimes expect production-ready, polished solutions, while universities rightly focus on student learning, experimental exploration, and technology fundamentals. We've learned to manage this dichotomy by hammering out crystal-clear project scopes upfront, ensuring everyone understands the realistic deliverables.

Timing is another tricky issue. University calendars and business development cycles rarely sync naturally. We've adapted by structuring our projects to run from August through May, aligning key milestones with both academic terms and our product development needs. We plan these projects three to six months before students ever arrive.

Making the most of the partnership

For aerospace firms looking to launch similar programmes, my advice is straightforward: start with well-defined challenges addressing real business problems that can be realistically tackled within an academic year. Seek out engineering departments that specifically match your technical needs, and, critically, assign your best engineers, who are not only technically astute, but also excellent communicators, as project mentors. Their guidance and ability to translate industry needs into academic challenges are invaluable.

Is it worth the effort? Absolutely. The payoff goes well beyond any single project deliverable. We're not just solving immediate technical problems; we are building innovation ecosystems that simultaneously develop the next generation of aerospace engineering talent. That’s a return on investment that is hard to beat.

Jay Crossman, advanced development and surveillance hardware manager, Acron Aviation