Center of Excellence for Additive Manufacturing

On June 14th, 2019 we hosted the inaugural Regional Additive Manufacturing Symposium, held in cooperation with Rutgers School of Engineering. There were 74 attendees, 16 guest speakers, and 8 exhibitors. Attendees hailed from as far afield as Boston, Philadelphia, South Carolina, and Central Pennsylvania representing academic institutions, the end-user community, materials developers, and original equipment manufacturers.

The welcome address was delivered by the Dean of the Rutgers University School of Engineering. Panelists from both academic and industrial backgrounds then inspired a lively discussion about bridging the gap between AM research and wide-scale implementation. The members of the panel were:

• Professor Nicolas Alvarez - Drexel University Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
• Thomas Farnan - Sr. Account Executive from Cimquest, a NJ based AM reseller and job shop
• Sangya Varma - COO of the Rutgers Biofabrication Workforce Development Center
• Russell Caspe - Advanced Engineering Manager, Gentex Corporation

A networking lunch was served after the panel discussion, allowing registrants a chance to peruse the exhibitor area. The symposium exhibitors were: 3HTi, Allegheny Education Systems, Inc., FlackTek, The NJ Center for Biomaterials, Shimadzu, SilTech, SunP Biotech, and ThermoFisher Scientific.The afternoon sessions were split into two tracks, academic and industrial. The academic track featured speakers from Rutgers University, NC A&T State University, and The Penn State University. The industrial track featured speakers from Formlabs, Gentex, Flightware, Dixie Chemical, Evonik, KAI, and Total Cray Valley.