Lab News

2026

March 2025: Dr. Prahalada Rao wins the Sporn Award for undergraduate instruction

Dr. Rao holding the Sporn Award

Dr. Rao wins the Sporn Award

2025

October 2025: Mihir Darji wins second place in the ICAM Student Presentation Competition

Student presentation winners of ICAM 2025

Virginia Tech Article: Metal, melted, mastered

06/25/2025: Mr. David Spadaccia defends MS Thesis, Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) of a Complex Aerospace Component: Effects of Layerwise Process Control on Part Quality

2024

Virginia Tech Video: Researching the best methods for printing metal parts

09/09/2024: Dr. Alexander Riensche defends PhD Thesis, Prediction and Control of Thermal History in Laser Powder Bed Fusion

07/23/2024: Dr. Benjamin Bevans defends PhD Thesis, Born Qualified Additive Manufacturing: In-situ Part Quality Assurance in Metal Additive Manufacturing

2023

2022

2021

2020

04/14/2020: Mr. Jordan Severson defends MS Thesis, Thermal Modeling of Additive Manufacturing using Graph Theory: Validation with Directed Energy Deposition (DED).

Link to Download Slides .

2019

09/01/19. National Science Foundation Major Instrumentation grant awarded for acquisition of X-Ray Computed Tomograhy Scanner.

09/01/19. Mr. Aniruddha Gaikwad to spend 6 months at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as NSF Intern working with Dr. Brian Giera.

08/31/19. Mr. Mohammad Montazeri successfully defends his Ph.D. dissertation.

08/22/19. Mr. Reza Yavari admitted to Ph.D. Candidacy.

08/16/19. Farewell to Mr. Grant King who spent two years with Dr. Rao as NSF REU Student.

08/08/19: Farewell to Mr. Joshua Toddy of Navajo Technical University who was trained to use the metal AM machines in NEAT labs for past 6 months.

08/01/19 Mr. Reza Yavari obtains NSF INTERN award to spend 6 months at Edison Welding Institute.

08/01/19. Conclusion of the 8-week Advanced Manufacturing Summer Institute for Native American scholars organized by Dr. Rao and Dr. Jeff Shield.

Spring 2019: UNL College of Engineering, Creativity and Research Award.

Spring 2019: Mr. Aniruddha Gaikwad Defends M.S. Thesis.

In the Glossies

UNL Professor Prahalada Rao awarded $500k for new metal 3D printing process to eliminate flaws. (Article in 3Ders.org LINK)

Rao investigates ways to transform 3-D printing (Article in UNL News, LINK)

UNL 3D printer lab at forefront of new technology (Article in KETV.com, LINK)

YouTube Video by UNL Research (LINK)

Article in the Daily Nebraskan (LINK)

Article in Nebraskatech.org (LINK)

The final step toward quality in additive manufacturing, Article in IISE Magazine (LINK)