December 02, 2024 by SME Communications The North American Manufacturing Research Conference (NAMRC 52) held from June 17-21, 2024, at the Knoxville Convention Center, brought together faculty, students, and professionals from across academia, government, and industry. Hosted by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, this year's conference was an inspiring showcase of innovation, collaboration, and the future of manufacturing research. Conference Highlights NAMRC 52 attracted approximately 750 attendees, including 350 students, reinforcing its role as a premier platform for networking, professional development, and exposure to the latest advancements in manufacturing. Key highlights included: Blue Sky Competition: A showcase of forward-looking projects with the potential to shape the future of manufacturing. Outstanding presentations were as follows: Winner: “Printing Beyond Barriers: A Pathway to Non-Invasive Deep Inside Body Printing,” from University of California, Davis Health, which presents a solution for the limitations of existing bioprinting methods due to their reliance on light-based energy sources. Direct Sound Printing harnesses ultrasound, capable of penetrating deep into biological tissues with pinpoint accuracy.Presented by Mohsen Habibi, Aijun Wang, and James Marcin Runner Up: “Leveraging Smart Manufacturing to Create Employment Opportunities for People with Disabilities (PWD) in Manufacturing Industry,” from USC, which explored how new technologies that augment human capabilities present a unique opportunity to overcome PWD’s challenges with historically physical industry tasks.Presented by Satyandra Gupta, Berok Khoshnevis, Quan Nguyen, Stefanos Nikolaidis, and Gisele Ragusa Runner Up: “Resilient Cyber Manufacturing Mesh Networks,” by Georgia Tech, addressing the need for an infrastructure transformation to ensure competitive and resilient manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. with self-organizing and self-healing future cyber manufacturing mesh networks.Presented by Shreyes Melkote and Xiaoliang Yan Presentations of all finalists can be downloaded here. Industry Night: Held at the Tennessee Manufacturing and Design Enterprise (TN MADE), Industry Night featured booths, networking, and an oscillating piston air engine assembly competition. This event provided a casual setting for students to connect with industry representatives, enhancing their hands-on experience and job prospects. The Founders Lecture: Dr. Rajiv Shivpuri from Ohio State University delivered the Founders Lecture, discussing the evolution of numerical modeling in manufacturing and its transformative role from the 1970s to today’s cutting-edge nanoscale modeling. Awards and Honors at NAMRC 52 This year’s NAMRC honored a range of exceptional research and contributions in manufacturing. Here’s a breakdown of the award categories: Outstanding Paper Awards: Recognizing impactful publications with engineering value and industrial relevance presented at NAMRC, the top three 2023 papers were selected: Outstanding Paper in Manufacturing Systems: NAMRC-198“Multi-sensor Fusion and Machine Learning-Driven Sequence-to-Sequence Translation for Interpretable Process Signature Prediction in Machining.”by Clayton Cooper, Jianjing Zhang, Ihab Ragai and Robert Gao Outstanding Papers in Manufacturing Processes: NAMRC-135“On the Mechanisms of Charge Weld Evolution in Aluminum Extrusion”by Eren Can Sariyarlioglu, Torgeir Welo and Jun Ma NAMRC-249“Spatial Characteristics of Ultra Hard Coating on Directed Energy Deposition (DED)-Printed 316L with a Novel Ultra-Fast Boriding”by Himanshu Balhara, Cagatay Yelkarasi, Ali Erdemir and Satish Bukkapatnam S.M. Wu Research Implementation Award: In honor of Shien-Ming Wu (1924-92), PhD, FSME, J. Reid and Polly Anderson Professor of Manufacturing Technology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the creator of the modern field of manufacturing automation, this award recognizes outstanding original research presented as a paper at NAMRC and subsequently, upon implementation, had a significant commercial and/or societal impact. Winner: This award celebrated a collaboration between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Texas A&M University, and Georgia Tech for their work on inertial confinement fusion experiments, which has advanced sensor fusion and data science for fine-abrasive polishing processes. Learn more here. Team Leaders Satish Bukkapatnam, PhD, FSME and Yu Ding, PhD accepted the award. Best Paper Awards: Awarded to the papers published within the past seven years in SME’s scholarly journals with the highest number of citations, as measured in Scopus within the past five years. Journal of Manufacturing Letters 2023 Best Paper: “Sars-CoV-2 (COVID-19) inactivation Capability of Copper-Coated Touch Surface Fabricated by Cold-Spray Technology,” 25:93–97, 2020Hutasoit, N., Kennedy, B., Hamilton, S., Luttick, A., Rashid, R., Palanisamy, S. Journal of Manufacturing Processes 2023 Best Paper: “Eliminating Voids and Reducing Mechanical Anisotropy In Fused Filament Fabrication Parts by Adjusting the Filament Extrusion Rate,” Vol. 80, August 2022, Pages 651-658Jafar Ghorbani , Pratik Koirala , Yu-Lin Shen, Mehran Tehrani Journal of Manufacturing Systems 2023 Best Paper: “Review of Digital Twin About Concepts, Technologies, and Industrial Applications,” Vol. 58 part B, pp.346-361, 2021Mengnan Liu, Shuiliang Fang, Huiyue Dong, Cunzhi Xu Student Research Presentation Award: Presented in recognition of students’ contributions to NAMRC. Finalists’ presentations included research on sustainable materials, digital twin frameworks, and advanced welding techniques, all with real-world applications in manufacturing. Winner: “A slicing and path generation method for 3D printing of periodic surface structure”Bin Dong, Yan Wang and Yanglong Lu 2024 Outstanding Lifetime Service Award: Honors distinguished members for their long-term dedication and contributions to NAMRI | SME. Winner: Delcie R. Durham, PhD, FSME, FAAAS has more than forty years experience in academia, industry and at the National Science Foundation, working to advance manufacturing. Dr. Durham has been active in SME for most of her career, joining the local SME Green Mountain Chapter in the late 1970s when she worked in industry. Over the next few years, she served on the Executive Board and as Chapter Chair, In 1983, Delcie presented her first SME/ NAMRC paper at the research conference at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She attended almost every NAMRC and many of the subsequent MSEC/NAMRC conferences during her career. Delcie served on the NAMRI Scientific Committee from 1986 through 2002. She was selected to be a Director on the NAMRI Board in 1990 and to the Executive Committee in 1992. During this period, she was actively involved with the strategic planning for SME led by Alan Male, who she considered one of her mentors both in SME and in promoting manufacturing collaboration between industry and academia. In 1994-95, Dr. Durham served as President of NAMRI and at the opening address of NAMRC that year, spoke to the need to bring more women into the challenging and rewarding world of manufacturing – there were only two women manufacturing engineers in the audience that year. Over the years, she has been delighted to be able to mentor a number of women and see them succeed beyond all her hopes as leaders in advancing manufacturing and bringing more women to this exciting field. Delcie was elected to two terms as an International Director of SME starting in 2004. Honorees of SME’s 2024 College of Fellows and Susan Smyth Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineers were also presented at NAMRC 52. Social and Networking Events Attendees had numerous opportunities to connect through events like the Blacks in Advanced Additive Manufacturing Reception, the SME Journals and Scientific Reception, and other networking sessions that fostered community and collaboration within the field. Looking Ahead NAMRC 52 was a tremendous success, setting a high standard for future conferences. The manufacturing community eagerly anticipates NAMRC 53, which will be hosted by Clemson University from June 23 to 27, 2025. NAMRC continues its mission to inspire innovation, foster leadership, and support the next generation of manufacturing researchers.
