2006 is a milestone year for UDRI, and we are proud to share our history and accomplishments with the community through this website and through the activities we have planned this year.  Read the press release.

Schedule of Events

• August 10: Employee picnic
• August 23: Community event at The National Museum of the Air Force, Wright-Patterson AFB, with honored guests.
• September 13-14: Advanced Technology Symposium. This two-day event will focus on the technologies of today that will prove critical to the essential developments of tomorrow.

Learn More About UDRI

About UDRI

It was 1956 – seven years after the University of Dayton secured its first research contract (translating aircraft flight-loads data for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) – and UD had some 20 projects underway. John Westerheide, who had been hired to lead the University’s first full-time researchers on a classified project, predicted that an organized research environment would be the only way to coordinate quickly growing efforts and position UD to compete with other universities and research organizations. Taking pen to paper, Westerheide crafted a seven-page proposal for the “establishment of a centralized research organization at the University of Dayton.” On Sept. 1, 1956, UDRI was born.

Fifty years later, the UD Research Institute has become a globally recognized leader in research and development of technologies which have not only advanced science but benefited mankind. UDRI has excelled in advanced materials, engineering, aerospace technologies, structural physics and much more, growing from $1 million income from those 20-plus contracts to more than $70 million from 1,300 contracts in 2005 – having topped $1 billion in sponsored research in 2003.