Changing the Game at the Point of Need

Fighter jets, Army vehicles, Navy vessels, spacecraft — they all share a commonality that is being addressed at Baylor: when these pieces of equipment break down, the people who rely on them need them returned to safe operational standards as quickly as possible.

By the very nature of their use, a variety of challenges stand in the way: their locations are often inaccessible, the materials they need are complex and the availability of replacement parts is reliant on an unpredictable supply chain controlled by external factors.

For Baylor professors Brian Jordon, Ph.D., and Paul Allison, Ph.D., the challenges surrounding the prompt return to commission are an important motivator for their game-changing research. As collaborators at the University of Alabama, they built a reputation as elite materials science researchers, with millions in external funding and partners like NASA, the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense — including the Army, Air Force, Marines and Navy. Now at Baylor, they found a place where they could advance that work even further and create pathways to repair jets, boats, planes and more at the very point of their need.

Top Recruits to Baylor

In the past four years, Baylor has recruited 48 new endowed faculty members to the University — meaning, their salaries and many of their research infrastructure needs are paid for by the earnings on invested gifts. The priorities of Illuminate and the generous response of the Baylor Family through the Give Light campaign yielded dozens of new positions designed to draw elite Christian faculty to Baylor.

“We were in a unique situation at Alabama,” Jordon, professor of mechanical engineering and the Kenneth and Celia Carlile Chair in Materials Sciences, said. “We were blessed with a great research culture and we had momentum. When you have that in a lab, it’s really awesome.”

The duo built an enviable research portfolio through the advancement of cutting-edge approaches in additive and advanced manufacturing, including leadership work in a cutting-edge process called Friction Stir Additive Manufacturing (FSAM). 

More simply, their research focuses on methods to move the entire process of repairs beyond traditional supply chains and enable organizations to use waste products to repair materials on-site. At the micro level, these advances would enable organizations like the Army to get vehicles back into the field faster by repairing them at the location of use. The large-scale benefit would be an entirely new process that is cheaper, faster and more sustainable for all involved. Collaborators like the Department of Defense and private industry came calling, and Jordon and Allison developed a reputation as leaders in the field.

While Jordon and Allison were working in Tuscaloosa, Baylor leadership back in Waco was making plans to elevate Baylor’s research in materials science. A new endowed chair position was key to those plans. Baylor donors Ken, B.A. ’69, Ph.D. ’96, and Celia Carlile funded the formation of The Kenneth and Celia Carlile Endowed Chair in Materials Science, and Jordon was an obvious choice for the University to contact. When he became aware of the position, he was intrigued by the idea of working at a Christian institution, but had questions.

“You wonder if there’s going to be a support system in place, and a willingness to invest in a research area that is not, for the lack of a better word, cheap,” Jordon said. “With every response from Baylor, I was floored. I walked away saying, ‘These guys are serious about this.’ And since then, Baylor has over-delivered on every promise.”

Allison also was recruited to Baylor as a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the newly formed Point-of-Need Innovations Center at Baylor. Several of their graduate students had to make a difficult choice to stay at Alabama or follow their mentors to Baylor.

“It was a change I was not expecting,” Ismael Hidalgo, a fourth-year Ph.D. student, said. “We were all talking about what to do. But I’m really glad I made the decision to come to Baylor. The facilities are amazing, and Dr. Allison and Dr. Jordon are fantastic mentors. They’re always there to connect us with others, to respond to our concerns and help us get to the next steps.”

Alongside Hidalgo, eight of their 10 graduate students made the move west. As Baylor developed the Point-of-Need Innovations (PONI) Center to house their work, they immediately had an experienced group of students ready to lay the foundation in Waco.

Point-of-Need Innovations 

On a typical day, the Point-of-Need Innovations Center is alive with activity as students, staff and faculty 3D print and test the behavior of materials like steel, titanium, aluminum and more. Students test for impact, blast and fatigue behavior while also developing new material and process models of products needed to repair or replace equipment used by their clients in the field. Above the state-of-the-art machinery that populates the floor, flags bearing the logos of every branch of the Armed Services are positioned as constant reminders of who the work is for.

Two years after the move to Baylor, the PONI Center is fully operational in the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative (BRIC). Picking up where they left off at Alabama, Jordon and Allison continue to manage over $20 million in funded research projects. Baylor faculty members from the School of Engineering and Computer Science, College of Arts & Sciences, Hankamer School of Business and School of Education serve as associate directors or affiliated faculty, giving PONI a truly multidisciplinary roster to provide expertise to that work.

Currently, they’re in the first year of a $15 million partnership with the Department of Defense, University of New Hampshire and Solvus Global to advance FSAM, a nascent technology that the U.S. Army hopes to mature. It’s a project emblematic of the work they do.

“There is a long lead time for many items the Army needs for aircraft and ground vehicles, like gearboxes for rotorcraft or replacement structural components for ground vehicles,” Allison said. “The parts can take a long time to get because you have to cast, forge and finish machine them, and if anything goes wrong, you have to go back and recast, and that can reset the clock for a year. That’s not ideal when you’re trying to support military or humanitarian operations.”

FSAM is PONI’s response to that challenge. To envision FSAM in action, PONI students make a comparison to cooking with butter.

“The FSAM process mechanics are similar to softening a stick of butter so it spreads easier,” Trevor Hickok, a second-year Ph.D. student explained. “Spreading butter straight from the refrigerator is nearly impossible. However, with warm butter, the spreading is smooth. The butter is not melted to a liquid, just softened. Through friction, we generate heat to spread the metal and create these metal layers.”

Allison adds further, “Our metal deposition for FSAM takes place in a solid malleable state in which it is not molten, and this offers advantages in terms of how strong the defect-free bonded metal layers end up being when high strength is required.”

Their work is geared toward the development of a low-power, nimble process that utilizes locally available raw materials instead of expensive materials. All the while, the process still must deliver the same properties as the more time-consuming approaches — quicker, cheaper and more sustainable. As the technology matures, manufacturers could integrate these advances into the development process within the next five years — a timeframe that motivates Jordon and Allison.

“What gets us excited is that there is an immediate application,” Jordon said. “What is needed to complete today’s work? That’s a question that drives us in our work broadly and in this project. We find a lot of fulfillment in knowing that we’re helping the defense of our country in these types of projects.”

The Next Generation

FSAM is just one example of research undertaken at the PONI Center. Still other students are at work on a $3 million National Science Foundation research project with a goal of utilizing floating debris in space to create new materials that could someday aid human habitation in space. 

“When I tell people I’m in engineering, people don’t automatically think it’s cool,” Charlye Baker, B.S. ’24, a first-year graduate student, said. “Then I tell them I work with moon dust, and they always are like, ‘That’s so cool.’”

Baker and her fellow students represent, to Jordon and Allison, a greater PONI resource than advanced technologies on the battlefield or in space. As important as those things are, training the next generation drives them day-to-day. 

According to Allison, the Point-of-Need Innovations Center “produces highly skilled and valuable people solving difficult scientific engineering challenges that can transition from the laboratory to having immediate impacts for humanitarian, medical or military requirements at the location of use, globally or even in space. 

“A lot of our students have gone on to be hired by the Army, Navy, Department of Energy, NASA, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Kratos and more,” Allison continued. “That’s what we produce — people who are experts in this technology. That’s probably one of the things I think we’re most proud of.”

The personal relationships built with their students played a role in encouraging eight students to make the move with them from Alabama to Baylor, and they now continue that passion for mentorship in an R1 Christian research university.

“A lot of our students have gone on to be hired by the Army, Navy, Department of Energy, NASA, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Kratos and more. That’s what we produce — people who are experts in this technology. That’s probably one of the things I think we’re most proud of.”

Brian Jordon, Ph.D.

“In my 20s and early 30s, a pastor really poured so much into my life and shaped me spiritually,” Jordon said. “Along the same lines, my graduate advisor contributed to both my spiritual and professional growth. The mentor relationship is not a boss/employee thing. It’s something we recognize can shape someone’s life, and we get so much enjoyment out of doing that as we prepare them to address these challenges as professionals when they’re done here.”