Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing Company, is working with leading universities through efforts such as NASA’s University Leadership Initiative (ULI).
These efforts increase educational access for students and support the development of advanced technologies that will influence the future of aviation. Ongoing research and development play a key role in improving safety, driving technical progress, and ensuring new technologies are successfully applied in real-world settings.
Jessica Edmonds, senior director of Applied Research and program lead for Aurora’s ULI projects, commented, “Our involvement in these initiatives reflects our dedication to not only advancing technology but also nurturing talent in the aerospace field. Being part of these projects allows us to be a part of industry-leading research conducted by universities, and to share our knowledge and experience with students, which is incredibly rewarding.”
Aurora offers relevant experience to these university-led research projects, including:
- Providing industry insight, technical expertise, and data to help university teams navigate complex aerospace challenges and develop effective solutions.
- Participating in project reviews to align university research with industry needs.
- Providing tools and platforms for real-world simulation and flight testing.
Aurora has been involved in six ULI projects covering a range of industry topics, including urban air mobility (UAM) and battery development. These projects usually span three to five years, providing time for detailed research and technological advancement.
Communication-Aware Autonomy
Aurora was recently chosen by the University of Colorado Boulder to contribute tools and methods for analyzing and utilizing the dynamic communication environment encountered by collaborative autonomous aviation systems.
Luke Burks, AI/ML research scientist at Aurora, stated, “This project aims to enhance safety, efficiency, and collaboration of autonomous air systems, paving the way for advanced communication, coordination, and navigation in shared airspace. Our flight test capabilities and autonomy experience will be invaluable to tackling the challenges of communication-aware planning, routing, and design.”
The team plans to use Aurora’s SKIRON-X sUAS for a flight test to showcase the resulting techniques. Aurora will also help define assessment scenarios for the SKIRON-X flight test and explore opportunities for transitioning project outcomes into practical applications.
Battery Modeling & Energy Consumption
Aurora Engineer and Technical Fellow Jeff Saunders will support a Baylor University project that focuses on battery modeling and operations, specifically exploring effective charging methods.
Saunders added, “This battery technology project will be crucial for the future of UAM. The project not only looks at how to charge batteries effectively but also how to create a robust infrastructure that supports efficient energy management across the UAM landscape.”
The team plans to design and evaluate batteries while examining suitable chemistries for UAM. This work will include sourcing multiple batteries to test their performance and determine their potential for future use. It will also involve working closely with other organizations and applying analytical models and data-based methods suited to operational use. The objective is to build a reliable infrastructure across the UAM sector, ensuring consistent charging access at each vertiport and efficient energy resource management.
Urban Air Mobility
From 2021 to 2024, an Aurora team participated in a ULI project led by the University of California San Diego (UCSD) focused on improving vehicle design for urban air mobility. The project, titled “Rapid Development of Urban Air Mobility Vehicle Concepts through Full-Configuration Multidisciplinary Design, Analysis, and Optimization,” resulted in the creation of an open-source software framework for large-scale multidisciplinary design, analysis, and optimization (MDAO). This tool enables engineers to enter specific vehicle requirements and identify design features that best align with those needs.
Lauren Wolfe, aircraft conceptual design engineer at Aurora, said, “The ULI ended in 2024 with the completion of a python-based MDAO framework for aircraft design called CADDEE, and the development of several medium-fidelity tools for analyzing aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and acoustics. The effort was a collaboration between several universities, government, and industry partners, and Aurora performed verification and validation of these tools using our own tools and methods, as well as our experience designing, building, and testing the eVTOL vehicles.”
Aurora is currently engaged in a follow-on project backed by NASA’s Transformational Tools and Technologies (TTT) initiative, focused on advancing large-scale MDAO tools for industry use.
Led again by UCSD, the TTT project aims to integrate a modern aerodynamic flow solver—referred to as a panel code—into the existing MDAO framework and demonstrate the framework’s effectiveness for addressing complex, industry-level design challenges. Both standard and innovative aircraft concepts will be used as verification and validation cases throughout the project.
These university-led efforts encourage collaboration between students and industry and help bring university-developed technology into practical use within the aerospace sector.
