On 18 March, the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) held a workshop at the White House, Washington D.C., where UK and US government agency representatives and academics compared their approaches to developing advanced manufacturing institutes.

Professor Sir Mike Gregory, Dr Eoin O’Sullivan and Dr Carlos Lopez-Gomez from the IfM’s Centre for Science, Technology & Innovation Policy led the event, titled: ‘UK-US workshop on manufacturing and innovation policy: practices and lessons from advanced manufacturing innovation institutes’. The aim of this workshop was for participants to share expertise, experiences and best practice and learn from one another.

Speakers included: Dr John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Jason Miller, deputy director of National Economic Council (NEC) in the White House; Michael Molnar, founding director of the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office (AMNPO); Chris Carr, Head of Manufacturing Policy at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS).

Participating in the event were senior representatives from Innovate UK, the Manufacturing Technology Centre, the National Composites Centre and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.  They were joined by US leaders from the Digital Manufacturing & Design Innovation Institute, Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow, PowerAmerica and America Makes. Moderating the discussion panels were Dr Mark Johnson, Director of the Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) and Adele Ratcliff, Director of the DOD Manufacturing Technology (ManTech) Program and Mike Gregory, Head of the IfM.

Michael Molnar said: "There were high expectations – which were exceeded – on the learning potential for this joint UK-US workshop on manufacturing and innovation policy.  We greatly appreciated the generosity of HVM Catapult in sharing lessons learned and best practices in establishing their Innovation Centres, and we trust that our progress has been similarly informative to the Catapult leaders. Our manufacturing innovation institutes’ leaders valued the candid and collegial discussions, and we look forward to additional conversations in the future.”

The workshop was funded by the UK Science & Innovation Network. For more information about the workshop please contact Ella Whellams or Kate Willsher.