Barack Obama’s former Assistant Director for Advanced Manufacturing, Thomas R Kurfess, delivered the Babbage Lecture on 13 May: The Digital Future of Manufacturing, Policy and Technology Opportunities for American Innovation.

Prof Kurfess, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, presented an overview of efforts to advance manufacturing with a focus on the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) which was discussed in the 2013 and 2014 State of the Union Addresses.

He discussed how technologies can be employed to move manufacturing into a digital domain by employing digital models, in conjunction with readily available high performance computing platforms to enable rapid process and production planning for use in both cost estimation/quoting and, ultimately, production and verification.

For more on the Babbage Industrial Policy Network and the Babbage Lecture series see here.