SW New Mexico News

New Mexico State University has been awarded a four-year, $7 million grant from the National Science Foundation through the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) and its Research Incubators for STEM Excellence Research Infrastructure Improvement (E-RISE RII). The grant aims to enhance research competitiveness in New Mexico, build partnerships across academic and non-academic sectors, and create workforce development opportunities.

Satyajayant “Jay” Misra, principal investigator and associate dean of research in the College of Engineering, is leading the team. The team includes co-principal investigators Roopa Vishwanathan, computer science associate professor; Suparna Chatterjee, curriculum and instruction assistant professor; Hameed Badawy, electrical and computer engineering associate professor; Chaitanya Mahajan, industrial engineering assistant professor; Gaurav Panwar, computer science assistant professor from NMSU; Marceline Masumbe Netongo from Navajo Technical University; Mihail Devetsikiotis and Xiang Sun from the University of New Mexico; and Krishna Roy from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. This project was one of five awarded by NSF.

“Making distributed additive manufacturing a reality is crucial for our state, with our population scattered in small towns and cities in a large land area. I believe it can be the greatest driver for innovation and small and medium enterprise creation, which will make economic growth inclusive across our rural and tribal populations. This project will help build a secure and trustworthy networking and cybersecurity framework that will serve as the foundation for wide adoption of distributed manufacturing not only in the state but globally,” said Misra.

The project funds the Research Center for Distributed Resilient and Emergent-Intelligence-Based Additive Manufacturing (DREAM), aiming to enhance New Mexico’s competitive edge in global manufacturing by establishing an advanced distributed intelligent additive manufacturing infrastructure. It will contribute to fundamental knowledge in advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, machine learning while fostering economic growth driven by small and medium enterprises in New Mexico. Additionally, it aligns with national efforts to onshore manufacturing.

The initiative also provides an integrated pathway for workforce development in additive manufacturing from middle school to doctoral levels by intertwining classroom activities with research experience while promoting diversity, inclusion, and belonging.

“This investment from NSF’s E-RISE RII program powers scientific progress through broad networks of researchers, institutions, and organizations that will significantly enhance STEM research capacity in our EPSCoR jurisdictions,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “We are investing in a future where EPSCoR jurisdictions are even more competitive in the scientific enterprise both nationally and internationally.”

DREAM aims to establish a research center leveraging expertise from various sectors across the state to cultivate an advanced additive manufacturing infrastructure for New Mexico. The center will focus on identifying architectural challenges in networking and security essential for enabling distributed intelligent additive manufacturing. To address these challenges, the team plans to propose scalable cloud-edge continuum blueprints through software virtualization; address security needs via frameworks ensuring verifiability; build a novel distributed testbed infrastructure with digital twins refining networking processes—thereby increasing adoption rates.

“This grant will help us lay the groundwork for New Mexico being internationally recognized as a top innovator in distributed intelligent advanced manufacturing led by NMSU,” Misra added.

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CUTLINE: A team of researchers from New Mexico State University has received a four-year $7 million grant from the National Science Foundation. NMSU team members include Computer Science Assistant Professor Gaurav Panwar (from left), Industrial Engineering Assistant Professor Chaitanya Mahajan, Computer Science Associate Professor Roopa Vishwanathan; College of Engineering Associate Dean of Research Satyajayant “Jay” Misra; Klipsch School of Electrical & Computer Engineering Associate Professor Hameed Badawy.

(NMSU photo by Vladimir Avina)