Welcome to the July/August Issue of Advanced Ceramics Insights | | USACA is delighted to welcome three new members to the association as we build broader bipartisan support for investments in advanced materials and composites, encourage deeper industry and government partnerships, and grow and sustain a more robust workforce: | |
IACMI – The Composites Institute is a public-private partnership established in 2015 “to move composites manufacturing forward and inspire new composites applications.”
“We joined USACA because of our growth in high-temperature composite research,” said Chief Commercialization Officer Jason Gibson. “Joining USACA allows IACMI to strengthen its ties across the high-temperature composites ecosystem and gain valuable insight into the challenges and opportunities facing the industry.”
“These connections,” Gibson added, “will help inform our research direction while creating new opportunities for collaboration and technology advancement.”
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California Nanotechnologies Inc.(Cal Nano), meanwhile, is a global leader in advanced metallurgy R&D and production techniques, such as Spark Plasma Sintering and Cryogenic Milling.
“USACA gives companies across the advanced ceramics supply chain a stronger collective voice and a valuable platform to build relationships, share technical knowledge, and pursue new commercial opportunities,” said CEO Eric Eyerman.
“The timing is especially important as demand grows across nuclear energy, defense, aerospace, semiconductors, and other critical industries,” he continued. “The United States needs a deeper and more resilient domestic advanced ceramics manufacturing base, and USACA can help bring the right companies and stakeholders together to build it.”
Cal Nano, Eyerman added, “is eager to contribute our expertise in advanced powder processing and Spark Plasma Sintering while connecting with organizations working to move ceramic technologies from development into scalable production.”
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REFACTURE, a start-up founded in 2020, is a critical materials company focused on recovering materials via high-temperature plasma pretreatment.
With a D.C. headquarters and a demo-scale plasma facility in Norway, the company says it is dedicated to “redefining how essential materials are sourced and manufactured—for energy, advanced industry, and national security.”
“Geopolitical instability, fragmented logistics, and surging demand for electrification and defense have exposed just how fragile traditional supply chains are,” it explains, noting that ReFacture’s platform “doesn’t just secure access to high-value inputs—it rethinks how they’re produced.”
Executive Director Ken Wetzel said the new members are coming aboard at an opportune time.
“USACA is developing and executing a more ambitious policy agenda than ever before,” he said. “Having leading-edge companies and organizations like ReFacture, Cal Nano, and The Composites Institute join our growing coalition will help us sharpen our message and build more support from Congress and the executive branch.”
Stay tuned for more insights into our members and the pathbreaking work they are doing.
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OBSTACLE COURSE: It’s crunch time once again for the federal appropriations process as the end of the fiscal year quickly approaches and the likelihood increases that temporary funding fixes will be needed to keep the government open past September 30.
The House and Senate have only a handful of days left in the legislative calendar before the election-year recess. House Speaker Mike Johnson has identified as priorities the Fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, spending bills for executive branch agencies, and an emergency $88 funding package for military operations in Iran and aid to farmers.
Another priority is a new GOP reconciliation funding bill designed to be passed on a party-line vote that would incorporate elements of the SAVE America Act election reform bill and other GOP priorities such as defense and intelligence spending and agriculture.
But that appears to still face a thicket of opposition within the Republican Party, which holds a razor-thin majority in both the House and Senate.
Appropriations update: As for annual spending bills for individual federal agencies, plans to move FY27 appropriations before the July 4 recess fell through due to GOP infighting and are still in the queue awaiting floor debate.
What’s next: The latest word is that Congress will take up a temporary spending measure in the form of a continuing resolution that funds the government through December 4, while still working on key annual spending and other bills.
We expect the NDAA to come up for debate first, with an anticipated 300 amendments. But hard‑liners will likely use their leverage on procedural votes to extract concessions on election‑security policy, including the Trump-backed SAVE America Act, immigration, and to seek potential constraints on Iran war funding.
A limited set of appropriations bills could also get a vote, but a full appropriations package before recess is unlikely given time and intra-party fights. The $88 billion emergency request is being treated as urgent but could be folded into other vehicles or slide into the fall if floor dysfunction persists.
No year-long CR: Expect at least one continuing resolution to keep the government open this fall, but no one is predicting a damaging full-year CR that locks in previous funding levels for the full fiscal year.
Read more: House Momentum, Senate Headwinds, and the Return of Shutdown Politics
Latest: House narrowly passes massive annual defense policy bill
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‘BEYOND MATERIAL DISCOVERY’: USACA Technical Director Dr. Aisha Haynes attended a signature gathering in South Carolina on the way ahead for advanced ceramics and composites for hypersonic, missile defense, propulsion, and space applications.
Major themes at the National Space & Missile Materials Symposium / Commercial and Government Responsive Access to Space Technology Exchange included ultra-high-temperature ceramics, ceramic matrix composites, carbon-carbon structures, seeker windows, coatings, ablatives, and refractory materials.
‘Opportunity knocks’: “The discussion increasingly moved beyond material discovery and innovation to manufacturability at scale, joining, testing, qualification, repair, digital engineering, and resilient domestic supply chains,” Dr. Haynes said. “The meeting reinforced that future progress will depend on connecting innovative materials with scalable production processes, validated test infrastructure, and clearly defined system requirements.”
Opportunities for the advanced ceramics community extend well beyond developing higher-temperature compositions.
The Department of War “wants domestically manufacturable ceramic materials and components that can be qualified and produced reliably at scale, meaning more than a few, for hypersonics, missiles, propulsion, sensing, and space systems.”
Proof of this signal to industry and academia, she stressed, is the recent Scaled Hypersonics Sprints 2026 opportunity from the National Security Technology Accelerator.
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‘VOTE OF CONFIDENCE’: We are closely watching the nuclear power boom and what it means for USACA members – including suppliers for gas turbine engines and nuclear reactors, particularly the move toward small modular reactors.
Investment is growing in Blue Energy, which Axios Energy describes as “a startup planning to build power plants that will first run on gas before converting to small modular nuclear reactors.”
"It's a huge vote of confidence, more than just the money. It's really a partnership on things like operations and siting development," Blue Energy CEO Jake Jurewicz told the publication.
Blue Energy is using GE Vernova gas turbines and GE Vernova Hitachi's BWRX-300 small modular reactor. “The project model involves assembling key parts of the nuclear plant while deploying gas, enabling conversion to nuclear much faster than typical reactor deployment timelines,” Axios reported.
Counterpoint: Data centers powered by next-gen nuclear? Don’t fall for Big Tech’s PR hype
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FROM IDEAS TO IMPLEMENTATION: USACA member Alfred University and quantum computing software company Classiq have launched a new initiative “to support engineering education, applied energy systems research and preparation for the emerging quantum workforce.”
The collaboration between Alfred’s New York State College of Ceramics and Classiq’s high-level quantum software platform will enable students and researchers “to build quantum programs without starting from gate-level circuit design,” according to an announcement.
“Alfred University’s strength is connecting advanced science with practical engineering problems,” said Junpeng Zhan, assistant professor of renewable energy engineering. “With Classiq, students can begin working with quantum algorithms in a way that emphasizes the problem, not only the code.”
“For research, he added, “the platform helps us move faster from scientific ideas and published methods to implementations we can evaluate for power systems and energy applications.”
More industry news: The Advanced Ceramics Revolution: Ceramic Armor at the Forefront of Technology and Manufacturing Independence
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SEE YOU THIS FALL: USACA will hold its Fall Technical Meeting on October 14-15, 2026, in Greenville, South Carolina. We are grateful to Lucideon for hosting the event, which will mark the association's second Fall Technical Meeting outside of Washington, DC.
"Following the strong attendance and engagement at last year's Fall Technical Meeting, USACA is pleased to once again host the event outside of Washington, DC," said Ken Wetzel, Executive Director of USACA. "We look forward to bringing together members from across the advanced ceramics community for technical discussions, networking opportunities, and updates on issues impacting the industry."
Additional details, including registration information and the meeting agenda, will be announced in the coming weeks. To assist with planning or express interest in attending, please contact LB Fullerton at lb@strategicmi.com.
From the archives: Member spotlight: Lucideon
For your radar: The Hypersonic Technology & Systems Conference is set for September 14-17, 2026, in North Logan, Utah. Check out the current agenda.
And it's not too early to mark your calendar for the 50th Anniversary of the Conference on Composites, Materials and Structures (CMS), taking place March 29-April 2, 2027, in New Orleans.
Spam alert: Please be vigilant for an increase in spam and phishing emails that appear to come from USACA or its leadership. When in doubt, reach out before clicking!
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