Manchin, Capito Announce $5.5 Million For Technology Development in West Virginia

Washington, DC – U.S. Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today announced $5,599,446 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for three projects at West Virginia University to study and develop emerging technologies, including smarter and more secure manufacturing, carbon capture utilization and storage, and advancing computing capabilities in the state.

 

“West Virginia University continues to advance the research and development of groundbreaking technology that will help America continue to be a world leader. These projects will support our growing manufacturing industry, advance carbon capture utilization technology and ensure West Virginia is on the forefront of machine learning and artificial intelligence. The National Science Foundation is a strong partner for the Mountain State, and I will continue to work with our partners to spur technological developments that benefit West Virginia’s people and economy,” said Senator Manchin.

 

“These NSF awards announced today will help researchers at WVU increase their understanding of topics like data interfacing and artificial intelligence. I’m also glad to see this funding will help support the development of innovative manufacturing processes to advance carbon capture, something I have prioritized in the Senate and as the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The research done at WVU is second to none, and I look forward to seeing the gains our state will make as a result of these projects,” Senator Capito said.

 

·       $2,999,998 – West Virginia University Research Corporation, Enabling Factory to Factory (F2F) Networking for Future Manufacturing

o   This funding will support a team from West Virginia University and the University of South Carolina to focus on developing cyberinfrastructure to support advanced manufacturing and enable data exchange across the manufacturing ecosystem to increase operational efficiency. This project will adapt, enhance and integrate informational technologies and operational technologies such as real-time secured sensing, high performance computing, wireless communications and artificial intelligence to support process optimization among distributed smart manufacturing systems for factory-to-factory networking

·       $1,500,000 – West Virginia University Research Corporation, Tri-state Research Institute of Manufacturing for Managing CO2 (TRIMMing CO2)

o   This funding will support the team from West Virginia University, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, The University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University will focus on the development of innovative manufacturing processes to advance carbon capture and utilization. The team expects to develop three cutting-edge technologies that will capture CO2 while producing electricity, utilize CO2 while storing electric energy, and convert CO2 to high-value chemicals

·       $1,099,448 – West Virginia University Research Corporation, MRI: Acquisition of Dolly Sods GPU Cluster for Accelerated High-Performance Computing and Applications in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in West Virginia

o   This project will enable West Virginia University (WVU) to acquire a special-purpose graphics processing unit (GPU) cluster called Dolly Sods. Dolly Sods will be a critical driver of WVU's goal of developing capabilities in utilizing big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to enable transformational research in a broad range of fields encompassing drug development, interstellar phenomena, biometrics, material design, and business logistics and management. This funding will also create training opportunities for first generation college students, female students, and those from marginalized communities will aid in the diversification of the computationally intensive workforce and will be invaluable to West Virginia.