Prof. Rajiv Mishra (Ph.D. in Metallurgy from University of Sheffield) is a Regents Professor at the University of North Texas and founder of Optimus Alloys LLC. He is a Fellow of ASM International. He is a past-chair of the Structural Materials Division of TMS and served on the TMS Board of Directors (2013-16). He has authored/co-authored more than 450 papers in peer-reviewed journals and proceedings and is principal inventor of four U.S. patents. His current Google Scholar h-index is 95 and his papers have been cited more than 43000 times. He has co-authored three books; (1) Friction Stir Welding and Processing, (2) Metallurgy and Design of Alloys with Hierarchical Microstructures, (3) High Entropy Materials: Processing, Properties, and Applications. He has edited or co-edited fifteen TMS conference proceedings. He was an associate editor of Journal of Materials Processing Technology and is the founding editor of a short book series on Friction Stir Welding and Processing published by Elsevier and has co-authored seven short books in this series. He is a recipient of TMS-SMD Distinguished Scientist Award in 2020 and TMS-MPMD Distinguished Scientist Award in 2024. He is an adjunct professor in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University. Most recently, he has founded Optimus Alloys LLC for commercialization of research efforts and serves as the Chief Scientific Advisor. Optimus Alloys is focused on process-specific alloy design for additive manufacturing of high-performance components.Professor Indrajit Charit currently serves as the Chair of the Nuclear Engineering and Industrial Management Department at the University of Idaho, Idaho Falls, ID, USA. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Metallurgical Engineering from University of Missouri-Rolla (now known as Missouri S&T) in 2004. He joined the U of I faculty in 2007 following a 2.5-year postdoctoral stint at the North Carolina State University, Raliegh, NC, USA. A licensed professional engineer (P.E.), Dr. Charit’s research interests span across various aspects of high temperature mechanical behavior, nuclear materials, radiation effects on materials and advanced materials processing. His research has been supported by grants/contracts from the US Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, National Science Foundation, and the State of Idaho. His teaching interests closely follow his research interests. Till date, he has supervised more than 34 graduate students to completion and is currently working with several others. He is the author or co-author of about 150 publications, including more than a hundred journal articles, several conference proceedings articles, five book chapters, a textbook on nuclear materials published by Wiley-VCH, and an edited book by Springer. He routinely serves as a reviewer for various journals and federal grant proposals. He is a member of TMS, ANS, ASM International and ATMAE. R Ravi Sankar Haridas is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of North Texas. He has published more than 45 peer-reviewed journal publications and presented in various international conferences. His research interests include mechanical behavior of materials, solid-state material processing, high strain rate deformation, and additive manufacturing. He also teaches courses related to mechanics and advanced manufacturing at undergraduate and graduate levels. He is a member of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS), Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM), and The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He serves on the editorial board of Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Engineering and Discover Applied Sciences.
