ME Faculty Research Seminar: Chinedum Okwudire

Abstract

In my last departmental talk, just before the pandemic, I announced a collective effort to purchase an open architecture machine (“the PANDA”) to enable research on additive manufacturing (AM) of metals. In this talk, I will share some of my group’s early research efforts on intelligent control of thermally-induced distortion and stress in metal AM using the PANDA, and opportunities for collaboration to tackle a variety of remaining challenges. I will also describe new, exciting capabilities we are introducing to the PANDA, as well as a variety of new machines our ME manufacturing group is acquiring to catalyze collaborative research activities in metal AM. Lastly, I will share opportunities for collaborative proposals/projects in advanced manufacturing that may be of interest to the broader faculty. I plan to leave lots of time at the end of my talk for questions and discussions that will hopefully generate fresh ideas for research collaborations.

Bio

Chinedum (Chi) Okwudire is an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering and a Miller Faculty Scholar at the University of Michigan. His research is focused on exploiting knowledge at the intersection of machine design, control and computing to boost the performance of manufacturing automation systems at low cost. Chi has received a number of awards including the NSF CAREER Award; SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award; and UC Berkeley’s Russell Severance Springer Visiting Professorship. He was recently selected by SME as one of the 25 leaders transforming manufacturing. He has co-authored a number of award-winning papers in the areas of manufacturing automation, control and mechatronics. He is currently serving as a Special Advisor to the Dean for Manufacturing, with a goal of catalyzing large collaborative efforts in advanced manufacturing.