Boeing grant paves way for new ERAU aviation safety lab in Daytona

DAYTONA BEACH ― When former National Transportation Safety Board chairman Robert Sumwalt III began his new job in January 2022 as executive director of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's new aviation and aerospace safety research center, his goal was to make it "world-class."

Thanks in part to a recently awarded $5.1 million grant from The Boeing Co., Sumwalt said the sky is no longer the limit for the newly renamed Boeing Aviation & Aerospace Safety Center.

"We've changed our vision from becoming a global leader in aviation and aerospace safety," Sumwalt said in a videoconference interview with The Daytona Beach News-Journal. The new goal, he said, is "to be THE global leader in aviation and aerospace safety."

Center's future home slated to open in early 2024

Construction has already begun on the center's future home: a two-story 13,000-square-foot building in the heart of the university's Daytona Beach campus. The building was previously Embry-Riddle's Eagle Fitness Center which was replaced by the recent opening of a new on-campus fitness center directly south of it.

The $4 million renovation will add five classrooms on the first floor. The second floor will include a dedicated classroom for continuing education courses for professionals, research labs, offices and a conference room. The new home for the Boeing Aviation & Aerospace Center at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is expected to open in January 2024.

"The idea here is to have a single place that has an identity, a place where Robert (Sumwalt, faculty members and students) can interact," said Embry-Riddle President P. Barry Butler who took part in the interview in-person.

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Center expected to be a magnet for visitors

The center's future home will also be able to host industry conferences such as the two-day aviation safety symposium that the Daytona Beach campus hosted in March for the Washington, D.C.-based Air Charter Safety Foundation. Approximately 200 industry professionals from throughout the world attended.

Embry-Riddle's Daytona Beach campus also hosted the annual summit a year ago and is slated to host it again in 2024, but this time in the new Boeing Aviation & Aerospace Center building.

Sumwalt said the donation from Boeing will help the safety center add more courses, both for students as well as already employed industry professionals who may want to attend continuing education seminars and workshops to learn about what's new in the field of aviation and aerospace safety.

Advised by a 'who's who' of safety experts

The center also has an "all-star" industry advisory board that includes executives from airlines as well as the vice presidents of safety for both Boeing and Airbus, the world's two largest aircraft manufacturers. "It's a who's who of safety (experts)," said Butler.

"We want the industry to help drive what research areas we look into," said Sumwalt. "Loss of control in flight (for example) is the leading cause of aviation accidents, whether you're talking about general aviation or commercial aviation. If we can work on that area ... we really have the capability to drive those incidents down."

Sumwalt said the center is also turning to its industry advisory board for guidance on courses it may want to consider adding to better prepare Embry-Riddle graduates with the skills and knowledge aviation and aerospace industry employers are looking for in new hires.

The center also provides consulting services to airlines and other aviation and aerospace-related companies.

"A major airline in the United States wanted a course in data science (to answer the question of) 'what do we do with all this data?'," said Sumwalt. The center put on a course that consisted of two hours of instruction each week over a 10-week period.

"They were very happy with us," he said, pointing to it as an example of responding to a company's need.

Embry-Riddle will be putting the donation it received from Boeing into an endowment so that it will be "forever in perpetuity generating support" for the center and its programs, including scholarships, said Butler.

Donation is a sign of 'confidence in our ability'

Butler and Sumwalt said Boeing's generous donation was a validation of the increasing impact the center is making to improve safety measures throughout the aviation and aerospace industries. That includes not only general aviation planes and commercial jetliners, but also unmanned autonomous drones and even commercial spacecraft.

Boeing's chief aerospace safety officer Michael Delaney recently visited Embry-Riddle's Daytona Beach campus to announce his company's donation to the university's aviation and aerospace safety research program.

"We're pleased to be a part of the Boeing Center for Aviation & Aerospace Safety at Embry-Riddle," Delaney said in a press release. "The best solutions to the important challenges our industry faces come to life when we work together with our partners."

Sumwalt told The News-Journal: "Boeing has shown their confidence in our ability to do it by their $5.1 million gift."

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Boeing grant paves way for new ERAU aviation safety center in Daytona