Genomic Materials Design: Enabling Concurrency.
Sixty years of academic collaboration and thirty years of commercialization by a network of small businesses have delivered a mature technology of computational materials design and accelerated qualification grounded in the CALPHAD system of fundamental databases now known as the Materials Genome. The national Materials Genome Initiative acknowledging the reality of this technology has spurred global interest and rapid adoption by US apex corporations. Designed materials with broad market impact now span a range from consumer electronics to space exploration. Ongoing design addresses the new alloys enabling new manufacturing methods such as 3D printing and GigaCasting. The extreme compression of the materials development cycle has already enabled materials to participate in a new level of concurrent engineering with dramatic impact in manufacturing innovation.
Thermo-Calc Professor of the Practice and Co-founder of QuesTek Innovations
Professor Olson is the Thermo-Calc Professor of the Practice at MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering. An MIT alumnus, he earned his BS in 1970 and his PhD in 1974 under Professor Morris Cohen. His career included research roles before he became a tenured professor at Northwestern University in 1988, where he was later honored with the Walter P. Murphy Chair. In 1997, he founded Questek Innovations, leading advances in computational steel design.