The priority of the UTC-IASE Breakthrough Award is to provide an award to recognize innovative, transformational and disruptive contributions in the field of advanced systems engineering. The amount of the Award shall be $50,000 in the first year the prize is awarded, and may be adjusted with time.

The UTC-IASE asked Xu Chen a variety of questions in regards to what plans he has prepared for the use of this award.

• How do you plan to use the funds provided by the Breakthrough Award?

This Breakthrough Award application seeks to explore transformative and collaborative strategies in research and education that respond to the fundamental challenge of poor reproducibility in additive manufacturing (AM) processes. A specific focus is powder bed fusion (PBF) – one of the few AM techniques that are capable of directly fabricating geometrically complex metal parts with good mechanical strength.

• Please provide a brief description of the collaboration opportunities the Breakthrough Award will generate for you and the UTC-IASE.

The research is a model- and data-centric study that considers dynamic systems and computer and information science and engineering as a unified whole. The generated knowledge and tools are expected to offer previously unattainable robustness and adaptability in AM, which are integral for applications such as digital manufacturing of jet engines and wing struts.

As the principal investigator, I have been leading a New Academic Plan project under the NextGen CT initiative, to build a testbed for PBF AM. The project will create a unique platform to create multidisciplinary research within the institute, spanning a rich spectrum of topics in, e.g. mechatronics, modeling and learning, data sciences, cyber physical systems, etc.

The Award will also support teaching activities in model-based controls and mechatronic designs. I have digitalized my teaching portfolio for a set of topics related to the pursued goal, and plan to create flipped/blended courses in AM and control systems.

 

 

I am extremely humbled to receive the Award. Thank you UTC-IASE for supporting junior faculties.