U.S. Air Force Academy provides update on Madera Cyber Innovation Center
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (KRDO) -- Officials revealed Wednesday that workers have finished a third of the project to build a $56 million facility for cadet education and research on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
The Academy broke ground last summer on the Madera Cyber Innovation Center in summer 2021; the project is financed by $30 million in Department of Defense funds and $28 million in donations from various segments of the Academy and Air Force community, through the Air Force Academy Foundation.
When finished, the three-story facility will provide nearly 49,000 square feet of auditoriums, classrooms and other space to the Department of Computer and Cyber Sciences and will serve more than 1,400 cadets who attend department courses annually.
The Air Force CyberWorx will also be housed in the new facility -- a collaborative effort bringing academics, industry and military cyber operators together to educate and train future officers of the Air and Space Forces.
Officials expect the project to be completed by fall 2024.
"It'll have a nearly all-glass exterior with eight different types of glass systems throughout the building," said project manager Brett Kmetz. "But the highlight is a spiral staircase of marble with glass handrails."
He added that the project truly is a work in progress, with the initial design changing during construction based on input from the Academy, the Foundation, the design team and the Army Corps of Engineers.
"The donors to this project care deeply about our cadets, this institution and our country," said Foundation spokesman Mark Hille.
Officials said that the facility will train cadets on how to combat technological threats and prepare for evolving forms of warfare in the future.
"They'll also be learning policy, strategy, law and ethics," said COL Judson Dressler, the Academy's head computer and science professor. "We'll actually have them work on operational problems. So, something that the Air Force is struggling with, we're going to use the cadets to solve."
He gave examples of potential missions.
"How do you find the bad guy? How do you build and and defend a network? How do you handle and control huge swaths of robots?"
Being able to process large amounts of data in cyber and AI situations led the Air Force to create a new major at the Academy -- data science.
The facility will allow the entire cyber science program to operate in one location, and make it easier for private industry experts to be involved.
Officials named the center after Paul Madera, a 1978 Academy graduate; he and his wife were the largest donors for the project.
