Cao part of new Engineering Research Center to Improve Robot Dexterity
NSF grant selected to receive up to $52 Million marks the first time Northwestern has led an Engineering Research Center
A large multi-institutional collaboration, led by Northwestern University, has received $26 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to launch a new Engineering Research Center (ERC) dedicated to revolutionizing the ability of robots to amplify human labor. Called Human AugmentatioN via Dexterity (HAND), the new ERC will develop dexterous robot hands with the ability to assist humans with manufacturing, caregiving, handling precious or dangerous materials, and more.
The NSF grant will fund the new center across five years, with the ability to renew for another $26 million for an additional five years. It marks the first ERC led by Northwestern. Core partners include Carnegie Mellon University, Florida A&M, and Texas A&M with additional faculty support from Syracuse University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Full story here.
AUGUST 2024
Cao works with team on National Academies Report
National Academies Options for a National Plan for Smart Manufacturing
The National Academies Options for a National Plan for Smart Manufacturing, https://lnkd.in/dEHWvdPE, is online now. Professor Jian Cao worked with Tom Kurfess and a dedicated and visionary group of committee members, speakers and the Academy staff members in the past year to put forward bold and inspiring recommendations. A summary of the report was delivered at this webinar on Dec. 12, 2023 (https://lnkd.in/d_JYFJmP).
DECEMBER 2023
Cao wins inagural Devor-Kapoor Manufacturing Medal
The award was established by the Manufacturing Engineering Division in 2022
The Devor-Kapoor Manufacturing Medal recognizes an individual or a team of researchers for a body of impactful achievements in the field of manufacturing.
The impact must be clearly documented and supported by evidence of long-term contributions to one or more of the following exemplar areas: pioneering research, innovative technology development/transfer, inspirational mentorship, and ground-breaking scholarship/writings.
JUNE 2023
Shuheng Liao wins Belytschko Outstanding Research Award
Shuheng Liao wins award and graduates this year
Chosen by the Northwestern Mechanical Engineering faculty, this award is presented to only one oustanding graduating PhD student in Mechanical Engineering. Shuheng graduated after sucessfully defending his thesis, “Toward a Digital Twin of Metal Additive Manufacturing: Process Optimization and Control Enabled by Physics-based and Data-driven Models.” He will continue his research as a post-doctral fellow at MIT.
JUNE 2023
Dean Huang receives Undergraduate Research & Innovation Award
Dean Huang received this award and graduated this year
Chosen by the Mechanical Engineering faculty, this award acknowledges Dean’s extremely strong research skills and outstanding academic ability. Dean will continue his graduate studies at MIT.
JUNE 2023
NU earns its 1st top prize for MSEC Design Competition
Derick Suarez supervises undergraduate team 1st place win at the MSEC Student Design Competition
The undergraduate student team consisting of Ben Forbes, Dash Slamowitz, Elaine Liu, Kayla Blas, Lukas Wolf, Margaret Gao and Sam Griswold won the 1st place at the national Student Design Competition. Margaret Gao (Senior who just finished capstone, and is graduating next Fall) represented her team at the Student Design Competition and presented Tuesday, on her own to the judging panel and audience, and did a spectacular job answering questions. The team was supervised by the doctoral student Derick Suarez and capstone instructor Michael Beltran, and the project is related to the robot forming testbed in the NSF ERC HAMMER project.
The Student Design Competition is held annually at the collocated manufacturing conferences of ASME and SME, a flagship manufacturing research conference of both societies. It is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Past Northwestern students have been placed among the top 3, however, this time is the first time that a Northwestern team won the 1st placement. The team will receive an award prize of $1000.
Full Competition details here.
JUNE 2023
Jian Cao joins prestigious group of national honorees
Jian Cao Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Prof. Cao was elected to the AAA&S along with seven other Northwestern Faculty members. The AAA&S is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. The academy’s dual mission remains essentially the same after 240 years with honorees from increasingly diverse fields and with the work focused on the arts and humanities, democracy and justice, education, global affairs and science. She earned this honor for her fundamental contributions to the characterization of the effects of material structure on forming behavior of metals and woven composites as well as acknowledgment of her current research which has direct impacts on energy-efficient manufacturing and additive engineering.
Read the full Northwestern News article here.
APRIL 2023
Cao Lab member Rujing Zha earns prestigious fellowship
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program has a long history of selecting recipients who achieve high levels of success in their future academic and professional careers.
NSF Fellows are anticipated to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering. These individuals are crucial to maintaining and advancing the nation’s technological infrastructure and national security as well as contributing to the economic well-being of society at large.
APRIL 2023
Cao Named 2022 Researcher to Know
Annual list compiled by the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition spotlights state leaders in innovation
The honor recognized Cao’s work as having made fundamental contributions to the characterization of the effects of material structure on forming behavior of metals and woven composites, and having direct impacts on energy-efficient manufacturing, surface engineering, and distributed manufacturing.
Read the Northwestern news article here.
NOVEMBER 2022
Cao Lab and partners secure NSF Engineering Research Center Funding
A large multi-institutional collaboration, including Northwestern University, has received $26 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to launch a new advanced manufacturing research center. Called the Hybrid Autonomous Manufacturing, Moving from Evolution to Revolution (HAMMER), the new Engineering Research Center (ERC) will develop and implement new manufacturing technologies for agile, high-performance and quality-assured components. Professor Jian Cao will lead HAMMER’s overall research to develop convergent manufacturing processes and systems.
Read the Northwestern news article here.
AUGUST 2022
Simulation-guided variable laser power design for melt pool depth control in directed energy deposition
Melt pool control is essential in metal additive manufacturing processes since the melt pool geometry directly affects the geometric accuracy and material properties of the fabricated part. In this study Cao Lab Researchers developed a simulation-guided process design framework which enables the possibility of defining a time-series laser power profile that achieves a desired melt pool depth across an arbitrary geometry using just one simulation, and the developed method can be implemented in an arbitrary part to enhance geometric accuracy and control material properties within a part.
Read the full paper here.
AUGUST 2022
Sam Webster wins Khoshnevis Award
Sam Webster was selected as a “Khoshnevis Student Awardee” for an outstanding registration fee waiver application at the 2022 Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium. She was one of four female students selected from the 94 NSF travel award winners.
JULY 2022
NAMRC 2022 Outstanding Paper Award
Postdoctoral scholar Dominik Kozjek, Ph.D. students Fred Carter and Conor Porter, Professor Jian Cao and Professor Kornel Ehmann, and Dr. Jon-Erik Mogonye from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) (absent from photo) won the North American Manufacturing Research Conference (NAMRC) 2022 Outstanding Paper Award for the paper entitled “Data-driven prediction of next-layer melt pool temperatures in laser powder bed fusion based on co-axial high-resolution Planck thermometry measurements.”
The paper presents novel ideas of improving control in additive manufacturing and was published in the SME Journal of Manufacturing Processes (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2022.04.033). This work was supported by ARL to advance the fundamental understanding of additive manufacturing processes and technological development for process control. NAMRC is SME’s preeminent and longest-running international forum for manufacturing research and its industrial applications.
JUNE 2022
Congratulations to newly graduated Dr. Zilin Jiang, Dr. Jiaxi Xie, Dr. Samantha Webster, and Dr. Dohyun Leem
We are pleased to congratulate our four newest Doctors in the Cao Lab alumni. Dr. Zilin Jiang will take a position at Apple, Dr. Jiaxi Xie will take a position at MathWorks, Dr. Samantha Webster is continuing with a career at NIST at Gaithersburg, and Dr. Dohyun Leem will join General Motors. Congratulations!
JULY 2022
Prof. Jian Cao Elected to National Academy of Engineering
AMPL’s Professor Jian Cao, whose work has led to innovative manufacturing processes and systems that have resulted in increased material manufacturability and more flexible, energy-efficient manufacturing, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Prof. Cao was cited by NAE for “pioneering a flexible sheet forming system and for leadership in manufacturing.” “We are tremendously proud to see Jian recognized at the highest level in her field,” said Julio M. Ottino, dean of Northwestern Engineering. “Since arriving at Northwestern more than 25 years ago, she has been a tremendous example of an outstanding researcher, builder, collaborator, and colleague.”
Read the full article here.
Feb 2022
Recent notable publications for the Cao Lab
Lab members Mojtaba Mozaffar and Shuheng Liao, along with Prof. Cao, published a Review in the JMPT, “Mechanistic Artificial Intelligence (Mechanistic-AI) for Modeling, Design, and Control of Advanced Manufacturing Processes: Current State and Perspectives.” This study reviews recent advances in Mechanistic-AI, defined as a methodology that combines the raw mathematical power of AI methods with mechanism-driven principles and engineering insights. Mechanistic-AI solutions are systematically analyzed for three aspects of manufacturing processes, i.e., modeling, design, and control, with a focus on approaches that can improve data requirements, generalizability, explainability, and capability to handle challenging and heterogeneous manufacturing data. More details available here.
Cao Lab member Zilin Jiang and Professor Cao also published the recent paper, “Prediction of forming temperature in electrically-assisted double-sided incremental forming using a neural network”, in the JMPT. In this work the Authors propose an artificial neural network (ANN) framework for predicting the forming temperature during Electrically-assisted double-sided incremental forming (EA-DSIF) using measurements of the surrounding temperature and toolpath features. The findings generated from this study are crucial for selecting optimum process parameters, estimating the forming force, and predicting microstructure evolution during EA-DSIF. More details available here.
Jan 2022
Lab member Sanjana Subramaniam recognized as prominent community service member
Sanjana, is the director of academic support and development, as well as a tutor for the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP). The program in partnership with the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), offers the only liberal arts degree-granting program in the state with courses in the humanities, fine arts, social sciences and STEM. First implemented 3 years ago to support incarcerated men, the NPEP is now offering the first incarcerated women in Illinois the chance to benefit from a full liberal arts curriculum. Read the full article here.
Jan 2022
Sam Webster and AMPL grad Jennifer Bennett named SME's "30 under 30"
Samantha and Jennifer were named manufacturing leaders in SME’s “30 under 30”. Manufacturing Engineering recognizes 30 individuals under the age of 30 that are leading the manufacturing industry into the future. These individuals exemplify extraordinary promise in manufacturing and the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) skills that underpin the discipline, plus much more.
DECEMBER 2021
Prof. Jian Cao joins the Planning Committee for Convergent Manufacturing
The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine has organized a workshop on “Convergent Manufacturing Platform – A Future of Additive, Subtractive, and Transformative Manufacturing”. This workshop will address issues associated with research and development (R&D) leading to convergent manufacturing. Convergent manufacturing includes the capability for mixed materials, processes, and systems all in one platform. Full event details available here.
December 2021
Congratulations to Sanjana for receiving Graduate Leadership & Service Award
Congratulations to Sanjana Subramaniam for receiving 2021 Graduate Leadership & Service Award. The selection was made by the faculty committee of Graduate Studies. The committee was extremely impressed by the wide range of contributions Sanjana has made both on campus and beyond through organizations such the Mechanical Engineering Graduate Student Society (MEGSS), the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP), the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), and the Science In your Community Center (SICC).
July 2021
Congratulations to Samantha Webster for receiving the Terminal Year Fellowship!
The Cabell Terminal Year Fellowship is the highest honor given to graduating Ph.D. students within McCormick. Sam joins fellow AMPL previous awardees, Xi Wang, Xiongqi Peng, Rui Zhou, Xiaoli Wang, Newell Moser, Ebot E. Ndip-Agbor, Jennifer Bennett, Marco Giovannini, Nicolas Martinez Prieto, Yi Shi and Mojtaba Mozzafar, for receiving this prestigious award. Congratulations!
June 2021
Congratulations to newly graduated Dr. Jennifer Bennett and Dr. Mojtaba Mozaffar
We are pleased to congratulate our two newest Doctors in the Cao Lab alumni. Dr. Jennifer Bennett will take a position as an Assistant Professor at the United States Military Academy West Point, while Dr. Mojtaba Mozaffar, will serve as an Assistant Research Professor here at Northwestern. Congratulations!
JUNE 2021
A mechanistic data-driven framework developed for additive manufacturing
Additive manufacturing, also called 3D printing, is a rapidly growing advanced manufacturing paradigm. Though metal additive manufacturing provides remarkable flexibility in geometry and component design, localized heating/cooling heterogeneity may lead to spatial variations of as-built mechanical properties, and significantly complicate the materials design process. Northwestern researchers developed a mechanistic data-driven framework integrating wavelet transforms and convolutional neural networks, which can predict location-dependent mechanical properties of the parts based on their thermal histories.
June 2021
Double-sided incremental forming holds promise for low-volume parts
Double Sided Incremental Forming technology featured by SME Smart Manufacturing “A new process called double-sided incremental forming holds promise for low-volume parts.”
April 2021
Plenary talk at international conference on material forming given by Prof. Jian Cao
Prof. Jian Cao gave a plenary talk at 24th International Conference on Material Forming, ESAFORM. ESAFORM is an association with the mission to stimulate applied and fundamental research in the field of material forming. Its annual conference is used to achieve one of the main goals of ESAFORM: to spread scientific and technological information related to material forming within academic and industry.
April 2021
Research on additive manufacturing shared here...
Prof. Jian Cao received Milton C. Shaw Manufacturing Research Medal
The Milton C. Shaw Manufacturing Research Medal established in 2009, recognizes significant fundamental contributions to the science and technology of manufacturing processes.
Jian Cao is awarded Milton C. Shaw Manufacturing Research Medal in November, 2020.
(Read More from ASME)
November 2020
Prof. Jian Cao led an army-funded project to develop next-generation technologies
Northwestern engineers are among those fueling the future of propulsion, developing next-generation technologies for unmanned aircraft systems that are vital for national security.
A new $3 million award from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s (CCDC) Army Research Laboratory (ARL) will fund the work of five investigators affiliated with the Northwestern Initiative for Manufacturing Science and Innovation (NIMSI), one of the University Research Institutes and Centers that harness interdisciplinary expertise from across Northwestern. (Read More from Research News)
October 2020
Congratulations to newly graduated Dr. Puikei Cheng, Dr. David Pritchet, and Dr. Nicolas Martinez Prieto
We are pleased to congratulate our three newest Doctors in the Cao Lab alumni. Dr. Puikei Cheng will pursue a position at Exponent (formerly Failure Analysis Associates) consulting firm, while Dr. David Pritchet, and Dr. Nicolas Martinez Prieto take a positions at Intel. Congratulations!
JUNE 2020
Congratulations to Prof. Jian Cao for receiving SME Gold Medal
The SME Gold Medal is part of the International Honor Awards, and recognizes outstanding service to the manufacturing engineering profession in technical communications through published literature, technical writings or lectures.
Jian Cao is awarded the SME Gold Medal for her creative and pioneering contributions to the development of the scientific and technological bases of innovative manufacturing processes through extensive publication, speaking and public service activities.
June 2020
(Read More from SME)
Marisa Bisram recognized as an outstanding graduate student in NSF-supported science
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.
Fellows share in the prestige and opportunities that become available when they are selected. Fellows benefit from a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees, opportunities for international research and professional development, and the freedom to conduct their own research at any accredited U.S. institution of graduate education they choose.
NSF Fellows are anticipated to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering. These individuals are crucial to maintaining and advancing the nation’s technological infrastructure and national security as well as contributing to the economic well-being of society at large.
APRIL 2020
Congratulations to Sanjana Subramaniam for receiving Ryan Fellowship
The Ryan Fellowship, made possible by a generous donation from Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan, supports graduate students dedicated to the exploration of fundamental nanoscale science and to advancing this knowledge into practical applications of benefit to society.
The fellowship, created in 2007, supports the finest graduate students in the country and provides them with the education and experience to assume leadership roles in the realm of nanotechnology.
Ryan Fellows participate in a variety of activities including, lectures, symposia, team building events and opportunities to engage in collaborative discussion and research with domestic and international partners.
MARCH 2020
Congratulations to newly graduated Dr. Newell Moser, Dr. Yi Shi, and Dr. Marco Giovannini
We are pleased to congratulate our three newest Doctors in the Cao lab alumni. Dr. Newell Moser will pursue a position at NIST, Dr. Yi Shi takes a position at Intel, and Dr. Marco Giovannini will remain at Northwestern in research. Congratulations!
JANUARY 2020
Developing a new neural network structure for sophisticated material design
A new neural network structure developed at Northwestern Engineering can predict the plasticity of materials, considering a material’s microstructure better and faster than traditional approaches.
“As we develop more sophisticated materials, we need systematic ways to understand their complex behavior,” said Jian Cao, the Cardiss Collins Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, who co-led the research. “Deep learning methods provide a way to do this with accuracy and speed to aid the optimization of design.” (Read More from Engineering News)
January 2020
Congratulations to newly graduated Dr. Daniel Garcia and Dr. Weizhao Zhang
Two new Doctors have joined the Cao lab alumni. Dr. Daniel Garcia takes a position as an Advanced Researcher at ExxonMobil in Life Cycle Assessment and Optimization, and Dr. Weizhao Zhang will join The Chinese University of Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor. Congratulations!
AUGUST 2019
Making manufacturing more efficient and environmentally friendly
Professor Cao aims at making manufacturing more efficient and environmentally friendly, while increasing its economic and social impacts
Professor Cao wants to upend the perception that manufacturing is dirty, dark, and dangerous, by transforming the processes and materials involved in creating a vast range of goods. She says that modern manufacturing, while remarkably diverse, increasingly draws on STEM disciplines — like chemistry, computer science, robotics, nanotechnology, and materials science — in ways that traditional factory workers decades ago could hardly imagine.
“I think of the new manufacturing as a kind of integration platform, one that includes a focus on being smart, sustainable, and safe,” says Cao, the Cardiss Collins Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School.
JUNE 2019
AMPL Most Valuable Player Award
Congratulations to Qiang Zeng (2017) and Yi Shi (2018, 2019) for receiving the AMPL MVP (Most Valuable Player) Award, which is available to all researchers in AMPL (post-docs, Ph.D. students, MS students, visiting scholars, visiting students) who have been at AMPL full-time in the previous year. All AMPL members cast their vote for their MVP choice.