Advanced Manufacturing Research Institute

This summer, four fellows representing some of the best young talent in advanced manufacturing descended upon Houston to work on rapid prototyping thrusts for one month. This all fell under a new organization started by Jordan Miller, newly an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University, Matthew Wettergreen, and an interdisciplinary team of advisors and thought leaders. This is AMRI: Advanced Manufacturing Research Institute.

We are heavily motivated by mentorship and education. We feel a responsibility to translate our knowledge in a way that can be easily understood by students of all ages. The fellowship component of AMRI presents a perfect opportunity to work with smart, motivated rising stars in the maker, science, and DIYBio communities and arm them with tools and conceptual frameworks from the scientific community.

We hope you are able to share in our excitement about this organization either by simply reading about it, or by joining in the discussion, or even by making a tax-deductible donation to the 501c3 institute here.

About AMRI

The Advanced Manufacturing Research Institute is focused on providing breakthrough mentorship, infrastructure, and research funding for promising young makers to pursue their interests using the scientific method. It accomplishes this through an intensive fellowship where mentor and student work closely together to tailor the learning based on a three-tiered framework closely resembling the engineering design process: a) define, design, and develop, b) quantify and qualify, and, c) document and deploy. The conclusion of each fellowship will see all fellows publicly presenting their work to an open audience of peers and the general public as well as publishing all their work online free for all to use.

In the summer of 2013 AMRI welcomed its first fellows for a one-month pilot program at Rice University in the laboratory of Dr. Jordan Miller.

For more information about AMRI, please see the announcement post to the Rep Rap blog earlier this month: http://blog.reprap.org/2013/08/announcing-amri-advanced-manufacturing.html

Watch the 2013 AMRI Fellow Final Presentations:

2013 AMRI Fellows

Andreas Bastian - “3D Printing via laser-sintering of thermoplastic powders”

Andreas Bastian’s interests lie in processes and materials, specifically those that manipulate the (traditionally) immutable. He has worked in a variety of crafts and disciplines, ranging from traditional Japanese wood-fired cermics to blacksmithing and foundry work to engineering design of and for 3D printers (and other creative tools). He comes to AMRI from Makerbot where he ran the R&D lab focusing on the fundamentals of additive manufacturing. Andreas is a recent graduate of Swarthmore with a B.S. in Engineering.

Steve Kelly - “Ink-jet printing of genetically modified living bacteria”

Steve Kelly is passionate about open source hardware and software. He is directly involved with distributed manufacturing and CAD software development. Currently he is a student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, studying Mathematics.

Anderson Ta - “Digital light projection (DLP) photolithography of plastics and hydrogels”

Anderson is a digital fabrication expert. By day he oversees the dFab Studio at the Maryland Institute College of Art. By night, he operates Matterfy LLC, promoting and evangelizing 3D printing hardware. Anderson has led some of the very first 3D printer build workshops in the United States.

Ravi Sheth - “Bacterial cellstruder for synthetic biology studies”

Ravi is interested in using engineering principles and open source tools to understand the complexity of biology and to create synthetic biological circuits. A recent recipient of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, Ravi currently conducts research under Dr. Jeff Tabor in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University where he also is a student.

Donate

AMRI is currently run strictly through donations by a collection of advanced manufacturing companies, universities, and granted funds. We are taking tax-deductible donations of any amount through Rice University’s 501(c)3 here. The charge to your account will read “RICE-IT WEB SRVC”

Donations will be used to help support the current projects, and any excess funds then organized to launch AMRI publicly and openly for Summer 2014 projects.