An Alabama higher education entity has secured a major partnership with a New Mexico-based national laboratory.
Auburn University has teamed up with with Los Alamos National Laboratory to promote RFID technology. The initiative aims to enhance collaboration in research, education and workforce development through the Weapons Production-Technology and Nuclear Training Program (WP-TNT).
Through WP-TNT, Auburn will collaborate with the national laboratory and its partner, TechSource Inc., to introduce advanced Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tracking and analytical data processing techniques aimed at optimizing inventory management in the lab's secure environment.
This partnership will enable Auburn to explore new avenues of collaborative research with LANL and enhance curriculum and educational opportunities for the university’s students.
“The WP-TNT partnership with LANL will advance RFID technology for precision location systems and hopefully open up many paths of opportunity for Auburn students to work with a premier government technology lab,” said Justin Patton, director of the Auburn RFID Lab.
LANL will also gain the opportunity for outreach within the Auburn community. According to a release, currently, Auburn is at the forefront of sensor technology and is empowering students to have hands-on experience with RFID applications. The partnership with the national lab will enable students to expand their knowledge of RFID systems implementation in adverse environments.
“This partnership is very timely in addressing some of LANL’s immediate workforce development needs and is a significant step toward Auburn and LANL’s mutual goal of building a long-term relationship, as formalized in the memorandum of understanding the two institutions signed in June 2022,” said Daniel Tauritz, Auburn’s director for National Laboratory Relationships and an associate professor in Auburn’s Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering.
The lab recently worked with chipmaking giant Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) to install a new supercomputer called Venado. Its budget, and the budget of Sandia National Laboratories, is expected to grow slightly in the coming fiscal year, driven primarily by expanded work on various weapons programs.
