Affiliates

ASTRIA Industrial Affiliates Program (ASTRIA-IAP)

Great benefits can be had as a result of long-term academic/industry partnerships. Oftentimes, a company may want to bid for a major project or have won an award for such and find itself in need of hiring the required skillset to execute the proposed work. There also may be areas of research (suitable for internal research and development [IRAD] funds) that are ripe for exploration where the company would be interested in accelerated insight or results.

It is extremely difficult to readily obtain this skillset and expertise via a rapid burst method. Moreover, the specific need may not be for long-term but rather relatively short studies where hiring employees and re-tasking others that are already committed to other projects, is undesirable. This makes a nurtured academic partner ideal to enlist on short order to fill and meet these cyclical research demands. It provides agility and responsiveness, while retiring and reducing risk. Moreover, if this capability can be cost-shared amongst a consortium of industry partners with similar core technical competency skillset needs, the benefits become multiplicative. This serves as an initial motivation for the ASTRIA-IAP.

Mission

To develop and maintain ASTRIA’s core technical competencies in:

Non-gravitational Astrodynamics
Data Integration, Science, and Analytics
- Multi-source Information Fusion (including Hard [Physics-based] and Soft [Human-based] Inputs)
- Machine/Deep Learning/Data Mining
- Artificial Intelligence
- Ontologies
- Semantic Reasoning and Natural Language Processing (NLP)
High-fidelity Modeling and Simulation
- Physics-based models
- Monte Carlo analyses
Multi-sensor/target Tracking
Space Object Identification and Characterization
Uncertainty Quantification, Assessment, and Prediction

…for industrial participants, as well as engage in the fundamental research that continuously expands and extends these capabilities. The uniqueness of the industry affiliates program stems from the interdisciplinary research conducted by aerospace engineers, mechanical engineers, computer scientists, applied mathematicians, computational scientists and engineers, and linguists. The outreach activities and research focus on how to exploit advances in knowledge and insight at the intersection of sensing, algorithm development, and physics-based modeling.

The industry affiliates program will enable ASTRIA to become the de facto leader in the arena of astronautical sciences and technologies, and related applications. ASTRIA resides within The University of Texas’s Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Department (ASE/EM). The University of Texas at Austin has a variety of world-class centers and institutes, and several of those are leveraged by the ASTRIA group. Within the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES), the ASTRIA program has a Computational Astronautical Sciences and Technologies (CAST) group. The ASTRIA-IAP solidifies CAST and it further enhances existing collaborations between ICES centers, the Center for Space Research (CSR), the Applied Research Laboratory (ARL:UT), ASE/EM, Computer Science department (CS), and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), as well as our collaborators at other institutions nationally and globally.

Benefits of membership

Industry Affiliate members have access to leading-edge research related to astronautical sciences and technologies via (membership-level dependent):

Workshops;
Annual affiliate meetings;
Campus visits by affiliates;
Corporate visits by faculty members;
ASTRIA group technical reports, publications, and multimedia presentations of the program’s activities;
Funded short-term “residences” with the ASTRIA group in which members of our Affiliates’ corporate staff work alongside ASTRIA faculty, scientists, engineers, and students.
Early access to algorithms, software, and support for that software.

Industry Affiliate sponsorship yields a highly-leveraged return, thanks to the large and diverse portfolio of other funding within ASTRIA, including CAST. It also provides an effective means of conducting exploratory or fundamental research that would otherwise be difficult to perform in-house by industry.

ASTRIA Industrial Affiliate Membership

There is a tiered annual fee for membership:

Platinum Membership – gives the industry affiliate two (2) seats on the ASTRIA advisory board, a strong voice over setting the priorities for the group. An additional benefit at this level is that the Platinum industry affiliate can also provide more specific direction to the research of ASTRIA student(s). This is in addition to the Gold level membership benefits as outlined in the table below.
Gold Membership – gives the industry affiliate access one (1) seat on the ASTRIA advisory board, a voice over setting the priorities for the group.This is in addition to the Silver level membership benefits as outlined in the table below.
Silver Membership – gives the affiliate member access to the benefits outlined in the table below.

Benefit	Platinum	Gold	Silver
ASTRIA Advisory Board Seat	X (2)	X (1)	.
Free Workshop Access	X	X	X
Free Affiliates Mtg. Access	X	X	X
Campus Visits by Affiliate	X	X	.
Corporate Visits by Faculty	X	X	.
Short-Term Residences	X	X	.
Access to Publications	X	X	X
Early Access to Algorithms and Software	X	X	X
Consulting Support	X	X	.
Early Access to Students	X	X	X
Ability to Direct Student(s)	X	.	.

The funds raised by the ASTRIA-IAP are used primarily to support basic research. A small portion will defray the costs of annual meetings, technical reports, computational facilities and to supplement travel and other expenses for project graduate students, postdoctorates, visitors, and faculty, and other support costs.

As with all University Industrial Affiliates Programs, intellectual property rights cannot be granted, and no specific reporting requirements may be imposed by the Industrial Affiliate. However, the University intends to host an annual workshop, provide an annual report of research accomplishments resulting from the program, and, provide the Industrial Affiliate with preprints and publications resulting from the research related to the “Term”. It is understood and agreed by the parties that any and all disclosures and materials made and provided to Industrial Affiliate by the University under this Agreement will be on a non-confidential basis and can be utilized by the Industrial Affiliate and its Affiliates without further accounting to the University.

ASTRIA IAP Platinum agreement template

ASTRIA IAP Gold agreement template

ASTRIA IAP Silver agreement template