Sridhar Kota is the Herrick Professor of Engineering, Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan and the founding Executive Director at MForesight: Alliance for Manufacturing Foresight, a national consortium on emerging technologies and advanced manufacturing.
Professor Kota served as the Assistant Director for Advanced Manufacturing at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2009-2012. He played an instrumental role in initiating and launching National Manufacturing Innovation Institutes and the National Robotics Initiative.
He is the founder and CEO of (i) FlexSys Inc., which developed and flight tested the world’s first modern aircraft with shape-changing wings to improve fuel efficiency and noise reduction and (ii) Inspire Rx LLC that developed negative pressure AerosolVE Helmet (PPE for the Patient) to protect health care workers and to provide non-invasive oxygen treatments to patients with respiratory infectious diseases such as COVID-19.
Learn more about Sridhar Kota.
Recent News
Innovation Should be Made in the U.S.A.
It’s time for the U.S. to adopt an industrial policy for the century ahead—not a throwback to old ideas of state planning but a program for helping Americans to compete with foreign manufacturers and maintain our ever more precarious edge in innovation.
Read more about restoring manufacturing innovation in the United States (PDF: 2MB).
Future Airplanes Will Fly On Twistable Wings
More than a century ago, the first aviation pioneers figured out a way to use rigid wings with flaps to generate enough force to lift a heavy craft into the sky. It was one of the great advances in human history and also the beginning of a new era in transportation. IEEE Spectrum
Read more about twistable wings.
Teaching and Research
Teaching engineering as a creative discipline and bridging the gap between theory and practice in the classroom and through hands-on design-build-test project experiences.
Scientific American dubbed Kota’s research on flexible one-piece machines and elastofluidic actuators for soft robots as “Flexible Bio-inspired Machines are the Future of Engineering.”
Learn about flexible bio-inspired machines.
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (2009-2012)
As Assistant Director for Advanced Manufacturing under President Obama, Kota’s signature contribution was his proposal to establish the Manufacturing Innovation Institutes to close the innovation gap between science and manufacturing.
Read about his leadership in technology policy.
September 2020
The pandemic has revealed the cracks in US manufacturing: Here’ how to fix them
Globalization is at the heart of the problem. With heavy reliance on global supply chains and foreign producers, the pandemic has interrupted shipping of parts and materials to nearly 75% of U.S. companies.
May 2020
Inventor of ‘Negative Pressure Helmet’ for COVID-19 Battle Searching for Manufacturing Partners
A simple, 3D-printed shroud on the inlet side of a conventional PAPR (powered air-purifying respirators) allows it to connect the helmet hose to pull air through a HEPA filter. There’s nothing more to it than that, but we need to scale up quickly.
October 23, 2018
How the U.S. Can Rebuild Its Capacity to Innovate
Harvard Business Review’s feature article on MForesight’s flagship research initiative, Manufacturing Prosperity, examines the challenges facing America’s innovation ecosystem. The article highlights a range of potential solutions to restore both innovation and production capabilities in the United States.
November 18, 2015
Reimagining University Rankings
The best way to reimagine university rankings is to move from measuring mere inputs (like wealth and selectivity) toward measuring real-world outcomes (like innovation and educational enrichment).