University Spotlight: University of California Berkeley

Our University and Government R&D Relations team, led by Shreekant Agrawal, helps coordinate research activities between Supernal’s Engineering and Technology Division (ETD) and universities/government organizations. The connections we are establishing and the projects being completed under this initiative will prove vital to our long-term success.

Over the next few months, we will be highlighting some of these key partnerships and the interesting work taking place, making sure you’re in the loop!

First up is UC Berkeley, where the team is working to address the challenges of traffic management in the urban air mobility (UAM) space. The team is developing tools to design routes and procedures that will be critical to bringing our vehicles to market.

Vertiport sizing and operations in central business district

Lead Aerospace Research Engineer, Anjan Chakrabarty, has been managing the project for Supernal and shared a quick progress update:

• The team designed potential routes connecting a vertiport at the main airport of a busy city with the city’s central business district, conducting a demand analysis for vertiport sizing requirements.
• They modeled the vertiport network that would be needed to move passengers between various Origin-Destination (O-D) pairs.
• They developed tools to assist with defining a fleet management system.
• They are investigating the simultaneous optimization of flight and charging schedules of eVTOL aircraft for UAM operations.

At the end of June, the group also gathered in our Fremont office to present their mid-year results. Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, Raja Sengupta, led the discussion.

Dr. Raja Sengupta presenting the mid-year review of their work in Fremont.

The work taking place at UC Berkeley will allow us to build certifiable routes in any large U.S. city and place vertiports in strategic locations — differentiating us from competitors. It will also help us determine the vertiport sizing and charging infrastructure needed to support operations, develop a fleet management system and provide valuable insights for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)/California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) compliance and Environmental Permitting Support A audits for different cities across the U.S.

Once finalized, the technology and roadmaps from this project will help us tackle various metropolitan markets.

Thank you, Anjan, for sharing an update and for your dedication to this initiative. Keep us posted on the project’s success!

Let your personal networks know about this initiative by sharing our LinkedIn post.