AFRL, National Science Foundation, academia converge in Miami Valley to accelerate materials discovery to deployment

From left: Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, Senior Technologist Dr. Ruth Pachter, who currently holds Emeritus status within AFRL’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, stands with Dr. John Schlueter, Designing Materials to Revolutionize Our Future, or DMREF program director, and Dr. Richard Vaia, chief scientist in AFRL’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate at the National Science Foundation’s DMREF-AFRL kickoff at the Wright Brothers Institute in downtown Dayton, Ohio, Dec. 7, 2023. Pachter and Schlueter’s efforts to rethink interagency partnerships were instrumental in connecting the AFRL workforce with the academic community via the DMREF program, Vaia said. Pachter, with her strong background in materials discovery and development, leveraged her expertise to connect members of AFRL’s workforce across multiple directorates to DMREF project teams with overlapping research interests since 2018. In her Emeritus role, Pachter has sustained these efforts to facilitate the translation of materials discovery to deployment in support of DAF needs. (U.S. Air Force photo)