MIE Department Head Sundar Krishnamurty Gives Keynote Speech at Prestigious Conference

Content

Sundar Krishnamurty

Sundar Krishnamurty – the Ronnie & Eugene Isenberg Distinguished Professor in Engineering and the head of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at UMass Amherst – presented the keynote speech at the International Conference on Industry 4.0 and Advanced Manufacturing (abbreviated as I-4AM and pronounced “I-forum”) on January 11th and 12th at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, India. The title of Krishnamurty’s keynote speech was “Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education.”

Krishnamurty is also the principal investigator for the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program at UMass Amherst and the site director for the NSF I/UCRC Center for e-Design. 

The backdrop of Krishnamurty’s speech was that, in 2023, the National Academy of Engineering's Study Committee on Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education released its report on how engineering programs can better develop advanced manufacturing capabilities. The committee examined advanced manufacturing techniques in academia and industry, with a particular focus on the role that industries and governments can play by including undergraduate engineering students in their manufacturing initiatives.

As Krishnamurty explains, “My talk presented highlights from this study, including a robust roadmap with specific guidance on ways to incorporate experiential learning, emphasizing advanced manufacturing, and strengthen ties between academia, industry, and government through mentoring and internship programs.”

I-4AM is a biennial conference series, which intends to provide a platform to bring together all stakeholders in manufacturing and Industry 4.0, in particular those in academia and industry, in both India and abroad, and for them to deliberate on the nature, needs, challenges, opportunities, problems, and solutions in this transformational area of endeavor.

During his visit to India, Krishnamurty also presented the 36th Distinguished Lecture on Advanced Design and Manufacturing at the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. His lecture was titled “The Center for e-Design at UMass Amherst.”

As Krishnamurty says about his distinguished lecture, “My talk highlighted the ongoing research at the Center for e-Design at UMass Amherst on knowledge management and predictive analytics in product realization, with a particular emphasis on additively manufactured systems.”

Krishnamurty is a fellow of  the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and an elected member and the department head/chair of the ASME Executive Committee. For his pioneering work in modeling and simulation and engineering-knowledge management in design and manufacturing, Krishnamurty received the 2022 Excellence in Research Award from the Computers and Information in Engineering Division of ASME. (February 2024)