The National Institute of Standards and Technology has awarded $7.8 million in total grants to 16 projects that aim to bolster the growth of the U.S. manufacturing sector under the agency’s Advanced Manufacturing Technology Consortia platform.

NIST said Thursday 13 of the projects will set up consortia, two of which will be led by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the Ohio Aerospace Institute.

UNC Charlotte will use the 2-year, $486,300 grant to establish a consortium with the Coordinate Metrology Society to focus on the creation of a technology roadmap that could help address the needs of defense, aerospace, transportation and energy industries for vast, high-precision technologies.

Meanwhile, the Ohio Aerospace Institute will receive a grant worth $499,994 to set up a consortium with the Federal Aviation Administration and industry stakeholders such as Lockheed Martin and Alcoa to create standards and certifications that would guide advanced aerospace manufacturing.

Projects that deal with gas turbine developments, glass manufacturing and synthetic biology technologies will also receive federal funding under the AMTech program, NIST reported.

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said the promotion of the U.S. manufacturing industry plays a key role in the Commerce Department’s Open for Business Agenda and the grants “will support public-private partner collaboration that boosts advanced manufacturing, which is critical to supporting economic growth.”

“Partnerships like these are needed to tackle shared technical obstacles and, ultimately, to capture the practical and economic benefits of new knowledge, new technologies and new capabilities,” said Willie E. May, NIST director and undersecretary of commerce for standards and technology.