The Wright State University Center for Manufacturing Sciences (CMS) in Dayton, Ohio, was announced this fall. It will focus on knowledge-based manufacturing and best practices, and will be led by Dr. Larry R. Dosser, founder of Mound Laser & Photonics Center of Kettering, Ohio; the company collaborates with a Wright State faculty member to help speed research to commercialization. Dosser will bring in researchers from institutions such as Harvard and Notre Dame to present seminars and lectures on technical areas of advanced manufacturing.

The center will be student-centric, Dosser said, and will use the power of the Internet and collaborative applications to connect locally, nationally and internationally to state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. “Students could walk in and say they wanted training in laser micromachining technology,” Dosser said. “We would provide a simulation of a manufacturing cell in laser micromachining. The knowledge level gained from the simulations gets you 80 to 90 percent of the way. Now you only have to put your hands on the hardware.”

Dosser expects to begin seeing students in January; he plans for the center to be self-sustaining within three years through research grants and contracts.