Auburn University is home to the NextFlex Harsh Environment
Node – a major node of the newly awarded Flexible Hybrid Electronics
Manufacturing Institute (FHEMII).  NextFlex is an institute for advancing the manufacturing of Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FHE). AU has significant infrastructure for design and development of harsh environment electronics under CAVE3 Electronics Center established in 1999. 

Goals of NextFlex and AU Harsh Node of NextFlex   

The primary institute goal is to accelerate technology adoption into advanced products by developing and commercializing advanced manufacturing technologies.  The institute will leverage the electronics
industry and the high performance printing industry, both well-established US industrial and academic areas of strength. The five FHE core manufacturing focus areas are included below:

• Device Integration and Packaging
• Materials
• Printed Flexible Components and Microfluidics
• Modeling and design
• Standards, Test & Reliability

What do Companies hope to gain from the Institute?
Companies engaging in partnership with the institute can do the following: 

1. Become part of teams that bid on project calls on the topic of flexible electronics
2. Align focus proposed projects with their next-generation product needs
3. Ability to task project teams with development of product technology demonstrator in pre-competitive format
4. Realize the benefits of 1:1 cost-share provided by the federal grant to the institute

The industry day is focused on providing benefits to the following audience:

1. Companies hoping to learn about opportunities
   for flexible hybrid electronics in defense and consumer electronics
2. Companies with existing products in the military and defense electronics space that are looking to gain a competitive advantage through the use of flexible electronics and additive manufacturing technologies.
3. Companies which are looking to leverage the federal investment in flexible electronics institute for feasibility studies on the use of flexible electronics for their
   product space through participating in institute projects. 

What are the outcomes of the Industry Day

1. Prominent speakers from DoD, Industry and Academia will provide overview of the challenges and opportunities in the flexible electronics manufacturing. 
2. Project Call 1.0 has been released.  Details on the opportunity, project team and focus of the AU Harsh Node will be discussed.
3. Attending companies will be offered an opportunity to join one or more of the proposal teams that will be submitting a pre-application on December 15^th. 

Thank you for your interest. If you have any further questions please contact: 

Pradeep Lall, Ph.D., M.B.A., ASME Fellow, IEEE Fellow
John and Anne MacFarlane Endowed Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Director, NSF-CAVE3 Electronics Research Center
Auburn University
334-844-3424  URL:  www.eng.auburn.edu/users/lallpra/