Brazil-based major international aerospace group Embraer has announced that it is partnering with two other Brazilian institutions to create an Engineering Research Centre (ERC) into the future of air mobility. The other two bodies are the federal government’s Aeronautical Technology Institute (abbreviated to ITA in Portuguese) and the São Paulo State Foundation for the Amplification of Research (FAPESP), a research funding agency.

Embraer, ITA and FAPESP will jointly invest 48-million reais (just over $10-million, or nearly R158-million) into the new ERC, over the next five years. The centre will bring together aerospace industry professionals and scientists. Its activities will have three main foci: autonomous systems, advanced manufacturing and low-carbon aviation.

“We are very excited with the approval of the [ERC] focused on the future of air mobility, in partnership with ITA and FAPESP,” enthused Embraer senior VP engineering, technology and strategy Luís Carlos Affonso. “I am certain that the Centre will be a benchmark of enterprise-government-academia cooperation toward the zero-carbon aviation of the future, generating value to society as a whole.”

“ITA was created in the triple helix model, as an intersection of academia, government and industry,” highlighted ITA's Dean Anderson Correia. “This initiative is another icon [sic] of this model, which will expand the training of human resources in strategic areas for Embraer, FAB [Brazilian Air Force] and the sector’s production chain. It will also promote international integration to meet the challenges of the future of air mobility.”

“The partnership among FAPESP, Embraer and ITA will certainly be fruitful and will offer an answer to a great challenge that will be faced by the research [community] in the next years: the transition to a low-carbon economy associated with advanced manufacturing,” affirmed FAPESP president Marco Antonio Zago.