Last month, NextFlex participated in the Defense Manufacturing Conference held in Nashville, TN on December 11-14. Dr. Scott Miller, NextFlex Director of Technology, co-led a panel titled “Electronics & Materials for Extreme Environments” with Mr. Mark Gordon of Manufacturing Strategies. The panel featured Dr. Marshall Schroeder of ARL, Dr. Ken Church of Sciperio, and Dr. Katherine Burzynski of AFRL.

Later in the week, Ms. Becky Lewis, NextFlex Director of Workforce Development, and Ms. Courtney Power, Deputy Director of Workforce Development, participated in a day-long session focused on developing a cohesive long-range education and workforce development strategy for the DoD. To further support this effort, NextFlex will host OSD ManTech and EWD representatives from each of the DoD institutes for a two-day workshop in January.

At DMC, NextFlex showed both demonstrators from members that resulted from funded projects and demonstrators provided by our Fab/Engineering team. Shown here is the live microcontroller demo that senses motion and flexing of the device and graphs it in real time.

In addition to contributing to the DMC program, our objectives in participating in the event were to support DoD and agency partners, support participating members, and to seek new members and commercial projects.

Ms. Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)), pictured here with Dr. Scott Miller with Ed Hendricks and Dr. Art Wall looking on. Scott is demonstrating the “IronPipe” equipment health monitoring device designed and prototyped at NextFlex.

Several VIP visitors stopped by the NextFlex booth, including Ms. Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) who learned about how hybrid electronics are enabling new technologies for the DoD.