Faculty connect with Boeing engineers through prestigious Visiting Professor Program
Industry partners are often invited to Virginia Tech’s campuses. But in a unique shift, Virginia Tech’s Darshan Sarojini recently spent a week at Boeing’s headquarters in Washington as part of the company’s prestigious Visiting Professor Program — an immersive experience designed to strengthen connections between academia and industry.
Sarojini, an assistant professor in the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, was one of 20 university researchers from around the world invited to participate in the program, which offered behind-the-scenes tours of Boeing’s production facilities, interactions with Boeing engineers and executives, and meetings with company units to facilitate deeper technical conversations and collaborative exchange.
“As a researcher, it was an opportunity to better understand how academic research can help address the technical challenges at Boeing,” said Sarojini. “It reinforced the importance of designing for manufacturability and producibility, not just ‘design for performance’ — principles I plan to integrate more deliberately into my own research and teaching.”
Bridging gaps between industry, academia
Spending time at Boeing sparked discussions among Sarojini and other faculty guests about the importance of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) to improve the design process at a large aircraft manufacturer — and the need for better training in MBSE in undergraduate programs. Sarojini also spoke with Boeing subject matter experts about Multidisciplinary Design Analysis and Optimization (MDAO), safety, and airworthiness, his areas of research expertise. He found particular value in learning more about the MDAO group’s use of an open-source framework, OpenMDAO.
“My lab’s research products include modules of OpenMDAO that could be useful to industry partners,” he said. “I was intrigued by their work on extended reality. VR, AR, and XR are domains I am incorporating into my teaching and research, and this too sparked ideas of potential industrial applications to pursue.”
Strengthening relationships
Designed to foster innovation and practical research application, the Boeing Visiting Professor Program gave Sarojini and other participants a first-hand look at how academic research can address complex technical challenges facing a global aerospace leader — and how students can get involved.
“This was a great start of a relationship with Boeing engineers, and I look forward to continuing to engage with the subject matter experts I met during the week, ” said Sarojini. “They will help define ‘test-case problems’ or ‘industry use-case problems,’ simplified enough to teach in senior design and tackle in research, but complex enough to demonstrate the practical applicability of methodologies developed.”
