The U.S. National Science Foundation awarded Cal Poly Pomona a $7.5 million grant for the creation of the college’s Center for Research Advancement in Smart Manufacturing, or CREST-RASM, which will help budding engineers and scientists understand manufacturing systems, according to a news release at cpp.edu/news.

The center will serve Cal Poly Pomona and surrounding educational institutes. Additional work to “develop a robust academic pipeline for select STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] master’s programs through the CPP-UC Riverside STEM Ph.D. Bridge Program” is being done, according to the news release. Cal Poly Pomona will also partner with University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg, Texas, for summer research exchanges.

Professor Shokoufeh Mirzaei will oversee the center, which will use artificial intelligence in four research areas: robotics and automation, digital twin technology, extended reality and cybersecurity.

“The research at CREST-RASM will drive transformative advances in smart manufacturing that directly support national security, sustainability and economic resilience,” professor Mirzaei wrote in the release. “This grant empowers us to prepare a new generation of engineers and scientists equipped with the knowledge and tools to strengthen America’s leadership in intelligent and secure manufacturing systems.”

The announcement of the new center comes six months after CPP’s College of Engineering opened the Vy and Timothy Li Automation Lab, a facility for students to further their studies in industrial robotics.