Keynote Speaker
Timothy W. Simpson, Ph. D
Paul Morrow Professor of Engineering Design and Manufacturing
Co-Director, Penn State CIMP-3D, Penn State University
Biography: Dr. Simpson is the Paul Morrow Professor of Engineering Design & Manufacturing at Penn State and co-Director of Penn State’s Center for Innovative Materials Processing through Direct Digital Deposition (CIMP-3D). He has received over $60M in support of his research initiatives, and he has published over 450 peer-reviewed papers in journals and conference proceedings and was lead editor on two textbooks. He specializes in product design innovation, metal additive manufacturing (AM), and Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM), and he helped launch and direct the world’s first graduate program in Additive Manufacturing & Design. He has helped educate and train nearly 1500 practitioners to date in leading aerospace, defense, energy, medical, and space companies and organizations. He is the Educational ADDVisorSM for The Barnes Global Advisors, a team of experts helping organizations industrialize AM. He is a co-host on AM Radio, having contributed monthly columns to Modern Machine Shop and Additive Manufacturing Media for six years. He is serving a half-time appointment with NASA Langley Research Center’s Engineering Integration Branch supporting the Convergent Aeronautic Solutions (CAS) team and helping the Engineering Directorate identify and define Advanced Engineering Skills for the future workforce. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech and his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell.
Innovating on the Digital Frontier: Making Sense of Industry 4.0 and Digital Connectivity
We stand at the dawn of the Digital Age where digital technologies are poised to transform the 21st century just like industrialization defined the 20th century. The rapid pace of technological change is unprecedented, and digitalization is impacting nearly every aspect of our daily lives. This is creating what many call the 4th industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, where autonomy, additive manufacturing (AM), artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), the internet of things (IoT), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), cloud and edge computing, and advance wireless connectivity are disrupting industries and transforming business models. At the heart of all of this lies digital twins, which connect people, products, and places in the real world with their digital representation in the virtual world. While digital twins are not new, their fidelity and sophistication combined with advanced computing power and wireless connectivity open new possibilities for innovation on the digital frontier. In this talk, we will explore how several of these digital technologies are connecting to enable rapid design innovation and impacting businesses today.