Graduate Student Seminar
April 03, 2026
10:00 a.m. ET
CUC McConomy Auditorium
Challenges and Opportunities in Low-volume High-mix Manufacturing
Current research efforts at my group aim to advance the capability to co-design materials and manufacturing processes using hybrid physics-based and data-driven approaches. In this talk, I will focus on metallic alloys, which are critical for enhancing the energy efficiency and performance of engineering systems. To shorten the material development cycle, we have developed a high-throughput system (DABI) for alloy fabrication and testing of temperature-dependent properties, including initial yield stress, elastic modulus, hardening, creep, and oxidation. Furthermore, I will demonstrate our work in the development of differentiable simulation tools (JAX-FEM series) to achieve effective and efficient property extraction from DABI’s experimental results and in process design and control of metal additive manufacturing. Our solutions particularly target three notoriously challenging aspects of the process: long history-dependent properties, complex geometric features, and the high dimensionality of their design space. This integrated framework of material design, fabrication, evaluation and part optimization lays the foundation for component-material co-design and accelerate the design-to-deployment cycle.
Jian Cao
Cardiss Collins Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Director, Northwestern Initiative on Manufacturing Science and Innovation
Associate Vice President for Research
Northwestern University
Cardiss Collins Professor Jian Cao (MIT’95, MIT’92, SJTU’89) specialized in innovative manufacturing processes and systems, particularly in the areas of deformation-based processes and laser additive manufacturing processes. Prof. Cao is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S). She is the Founding Director of the research center on Manufacturing Science and Innovation at Northwestern (NIMSI). Cao was the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Materials Processing Technology. She is a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), ASME, the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP) and SME. Her major awards include DoD Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, ASME Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award, the inaugural ASME Devor-Kapoor Manufacturing Medal, SME Gold Medal, and SME Frederick W. Taylor Research Medal. Prof. Cao now serves as an Associate Vice President for Research at Northwestern, a member of the National Materials and Manufacturing Board of the National Academies, Board of Directors of SME, and Board of mHUB in Chicago – accelerator for hardtech innovation and manufacturing.
Upcoming Events
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April 17 2026
10:00 AM ET
Materials Science and Engineering
presented by Renata Wentzcovitch, Columbia University
CUC McConomy Auditorium
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April 24 2026
10:00 AM ET
Materials Science and Engineering
CUC McConomy Auditorium