Beavercreek defense contractor among winners at Air Force pitch event

Nina Joshi, UES chief executive. Contributed.

Nina Joshi, UES chief executive. Contributed.

A Beavercreek defense contractor walked away a winner at a recent Air Force Pitch Day event in Florida.

UES won an award to develop materials for hypersonics at its first pitch day presentation at the Doolittle Institute in Niceville, Fla., the company announced.

The Doolittle Institute, part of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), hosted the event in which seven companies were awarded contracts averaging $750,000. A company announcement did not say exactly how much UES won.

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Hypersonic speeds and weapons move far faster than the speed of sound, often at Mach 5 or faster.

At the event — called “Hypersonics Pitch Day” — nine pre-selected organizations pitched technical ideas for addressing challenges inherent in developing hypersonics technology. Representatives of the firms gave five-minute closed-door presentations to Air Force experts, followed by five minutes of questions. Seven of the firms were awarded funding on the spot.

The pitch day formats allow companies to connect with the Air Force far faster than usual.

Nina Joshi, UES chief executive,said her company was able to showcase its “capabilities in materials and processes.

The UES win was “also due in part to our unique strengths in technology transition and commercialization. This award complements and continues our work in these areas at the AFRL.”

AFRL is headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a key customer for UES and many other defense firms in the area.

UES said its scientists are “known leaders” in ceramic matrix composites, ultra-high temperature ceramics, and high entropy alloys, with recent expansion into other fields, including bio-materials, flexible materials, additive manufacturing, machine-learning, and artificial intelligence.

UES, Inc. was founded in 1973. It is based at 4401 Dayton Xenia Road.

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