Distinguished Seminar - Frontiers of Impact in Research, Education, and Economic Development through Additive Manufacturing

Ryan Wicker, Ph.D., P.E.
Mr. and Mrs. MacIntosh Murchison Chair I Professor and Director
W.M. Keck Center for 3D Innovation
University of Texas at El Paso

Friday, Nov. 10th at 3:00pm
MEK 3550
Sid & Marian Green Classroom

ABSTRACT: The Keck Center for 3D Innovation (Keck Center), originally founded in 2000 and recently celebrating a groundbreaking on a new $80M building (shared with the Aerospace Center) at The University of Texas at El Paso, represents a world-class advanced manufacturing research facility focused mainly on additive manufacturing (AM) research. The Keck Center has always promoted student engagement, professional development, and success through a commitment to strategic research excellence, providing its student participants with unparalleled educational opportunities. As an example, advanced research in laser-based powder bed fusion of metals (PBF-LB/M) requires expertise across many disciplines, requiring advanced knowledge in experimental fluid mechanics, non-contact temperature measurements, microsecond level control, materials and metallurgy, data science and management, and more. As criticality of components produced via these technologies continues to increase, understanding the key elements of the process and their interactions that impact ultimate part performance is required to reduce processing variability and improve repeatability and reproducibility of manufactured components.With student success, research excellence and trust but verify experimentation mindsets, the Keck Center produces next generation AM thinkers and doers with an approach rooted in fundamentals and process transparency. Several examples of the breadth and depth of research enabled via AM will be provided. In addition to research and education, the Keck Center and its Aerospace Center partner, through UTEP’s outstanding students, is driving a new economy in the El Paso region as one of 21 regions awarded the Economic Development Administration’s American Rescue Plan’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge and most recently recognized as a finalist in the National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines program.

BIO: Ryan Wicker, Ph.D., P.E., is the endowed Mr. and Mrs. MacIntosh Murchison Chair I professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), director and founder of the UTEP W.M. Keck Center for 3D Innovation (Keck Center) and America Makes Satellite Center, and Editor-in-Chief and founding editor of Additive Manufacturing, an Elsevier journal. Ryan received degrees in mechanical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin (B.S., 1987) and Stanford University (M.S., 1991, and Ph.D., 1995), worked at General Dynamics Fort Worth Division (1987-1989), and has spent his entire academic career at UTEP (1994-present) in his hometown of El Paso.Ryan has co-founded five university spin-out companies, holds 29 U.S. patents and nine foreign patents, published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, and has employed more than 500 student researchers in UTEP’s Keck Center with many of them becoming leaders in the additive manufacturing industry.