Mexican University Opens Cutting-Edge Aerospace Engineering Center

A state-of-the-art educational aeronautical and avionics engineering facility that adds to Mexico's growing aerospace industry teaching infrastructure has  recently opened at the Universidad Autónoma (Autonomous University) de Nuevo León, in Monterrey.  The purpose of  program is to satisfy the trained human resource requirements of Mexico’s growing aerospace industry.  It resides within the university’s department of mechanical and electrical engineering. 

 

The complex contains what is Mexico's first advanced wind tunnel and only the third in all of Latin America. (The others are located at Tecnológico Aeronaútico de Brasil and the Centro de Investigaciones de la Fuerza Aérea of Chile.).  The application of the university’s wind tunnel will range from testing of airframe technology, to research on the “boundary layer.”  The boundary layer is the thin, slow moving layer of air adjacent to wind exposed surface. 

 

The opening of Centro de Investigación e Innovación en Ingeniería Aeronáutica, known by its acronym, CIIIA, took place on March 15 at the university’s Monterrey, Mexico campus. A host of  Mexican aerospace industry and academic guests joined Nuevo León governor, Rodrigo Medina de la Cruz and Gilberto Lopez Meyer, director of the country´s aviation authority, Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares, in representation of President Calderón. Investment in the Mexican aerospace education project was about US $22 million.

 

The complex, located on a 3,600 square-meter spread, and opens at a time when technical schools in Mexico are increasingly programming their curriculum to assist companies that manufacture in Mexico. 

 

The Offshore Group’s Manufacturas Zapalinamé is located an hour’s distance from the new educational facilities.  Companies locating in the Group’s La Angostura Industrial Park will be able to access the skilled human resources that the Autonomous University of Nuevo León will educate. This year's addition to the university follows the 2007 implementation of a program in aeronautical and aerospace engineering and its 2009 implementation of a aeronautical maintenance degree program in the school´s prepatory technical institute.

 

Included on the Monterrey campus facility is 8,536 square-meters of office and teaching space and 15 laboratories equipped with so-called "third-generation"  aerospace technology. It also includes a hangar for practice in MRO laboratory techniques, structures and systems of airplanes and development of design and construction projects. There are cubicles available for professional researchers and companies working at the facility on a partnership (en convenio) basis.

 

The mission of CIIA, according to the university, is "to be the technological arm of the aeronautical and aerospace industry of the north of Mexico."