Cranfield PhD student wins NATO innovation award
Cranfield PhD student, Alessandro Busachi, has won a NATO innovation challenge against competition from around the world. He was successful in the Communications and Information (NCI) Agency’s second annual Defence Innovation Challenge, for his proposal in the area of 'Rapidly deployable, scalable, IT infrastructure'.
The third year PhD researcher’s thesis, “Modelling applications of additive manufacturing in defence support services”, was one of ten winners out of an original 48 proposals from 12 countries.
Additive manufacturing (AM) is regarded as an emerging and promising technology which could enable rapid, delocalised and flexible manufacturing.
Alessandro Busachi's research looked at optimising additive manufacturing in the field, reducing the Royal Navy's reliance on supply chains and enabling them to recover capability (in the case of breakdown or battle damage).
A NATO spokesperson described the research as a “great idea for capability that NATO needs in the coming years.”
Dr John ahmet Erkoyuncu, Mr Busachi’s PhD supervisor, said: “Additive manufacturing is receiving increasing interest in a wide range of contexts. Alessandro’s work offers a unique approach to be able to evaluate where it will be more worthwhile to apply AM. I am delighted with the NATO prize for him and hope he goes on to realise many more achievements.”
NATO’s Defence Innovation Challenge is aimed at accelerating transformational, state-of-the-art technology solutions from small business and academia in support of NATO’s (Command, Control, Communications, and Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance - C4ISR) and cyber capabilities. Small businesses and academia from all 28 NATO nations were invited to submit proposals in 10 focus areas.