Chinedum Okwudire

Chinedum (Chi) Okwudire is a Nigerian-American mechanical engineer and a professor of Mechanical Engineering and Miller Faculty Scholar at the University of Michigan, where he directs the Smart and Sustainable Automation Research Lab. He is also the founder and chief technology officer of Ulendo Technologies, Inc. His research is in the area of manufacturing automation, control engineering, and mechatronics.

Education
Okwudire received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Middle East Technical University in 2003. Okwudire then completed his graduate studies at the University of British Columbia, earning a Masters of Applied Science in 2005 and a Ph.D. in 2009, both in Mechanical Engineering. Okwudire's doctoral thesis was on the modeling and control of feed drive systems for high-speed machine tools, using techniques such as finite element modeling and an adaptive sliding mode controller to improve feed drive servo bandwidth and disturbance rejection ability.

Career and Research
After receiving his doctorate in 2009, Okwudire joined DMG Mori Seiki Co. in 2010 as a senior mechanical engineer and systems optimization team leader before joining the University of Michigan faculty in 2011 as an assistant professor. In 2017, he was promoted to the rank of associate professor, and in 2023 he was promoted to the rank of Full Professor at the University of Michigan. He also served as the Associate Chair of Integrative Systems + Design (ISD) at the University of Michigan from 2019 to 2021.

Okwudire's expertise lies in manufacturing automation, control engineering and mechatronics, with key applications to additive manufacturing (or 3-D printing), nano-positioning, machining, distributed manufacturing, and smart manufacturing systems. He directs the Smart and Sustainable Automation Research Lab at the University of Michigan, which seeks to exploit knowledge at the intersection of machine design, control and computing to boost the performance of manufacturing automation systems at low cost. Okwudire is also the founder and chief technology officer of Ulendo Technologies, Inc., a company that develops advanced software solutions for manufacturing automation.

Okwudire's research at the University of Michigan and Ulendo Technologies, Inc. has played a critical role in the recent emergence of low-cost fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printers capable of printing at much higher speeds than their predecessors by using software driven vibration compensation to maintain high print quality. The importance of software driven vibration compensation as a tool for boosting FFF 3D printing speeds was originally popularized by research from the Smart and Sustainable Automation Research Lab at the University of Michigan in 2017. As the 3D printing community grappled with how to introduce vibration compensation to open-source firmware, in early 2020, Okwudire encouraged members of the community on a public online forum to explore input shaping as a simpler alternative to the more-advanced FBS (filtered B-splines) approach that his research group had used in their 2017 research. Then, in late 2020, the Klipper firmware team introduced input shaping into the world of open-source 3D printing firmware. The Marlin firmware team has also introduced input shaping to its open-source firmware. The underlying framework for many of the available input shaping algorithms currently available in Marlin is enabled by Fixed-Time Motion contributed to the Marlin open-source project by Ulendo Technologies, Inc. Okwudire has shown through his research that the FBS algorithm produces better vibration compensation than input shaping because it eliminates vibration without causing corner rounding and other motion errors induced by input shaping. The FBS algorithm has been licensed from the University of Michigan by Ulendo Technologies, Inc., as part of its Ulendo VC suite of software for vibration compensation of 3D printers. In recognition of the impact of his research and entrepreneurship in advancing 3D printing automation, in 2022 Okwudire was named by SME (formerly, the society of Manufacturing Engineers) as one of the 25 Leaders Transforming Manufacturing. Okwudire and his research group have continued their work on developing new methods and algorithms for improving manufacturing automation, for example, their SmartScan algorithm for reducing residual stress and shape distortion in laser-based 3D printing of metals.

Okwudire is also a strong champion for diversity, equity and inclusion in the academe. In 2018, he and Professor Lola Eniola-Adefeso, co-established the NextProf Pathfinder Workshop, a future-faculty program specifically aimed at first- and second-year PhD students, rather than final year PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, as is typical in many other institutions. The goal of the Pathfinder workshop is to equip the attendees – mostly women and students from underrepresented groups – with the knowledge and skills needed to develop strong CVs, early in their PhD process, to make them competitive for faculty positions. The NextProf Pathfinder program has now expanded to include the University of California, San Diego and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Awards

 * National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2014
 * Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium Invitee, National Academy of Engineering, 2014
 * Best Oral Paper Award, American Society for Precision Engineering, 2015
 * International Symposium on Flexible Automation (ISFA) Young Investigator Award, 2016
 * SAE Ralph Teetor Educational Award, 2016
 * SME (formerly, Society of Manufacturing Engineers) Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, 2016
 * University of Michigan's North Campus MLK Spirit Award, 2017
 * ASME Best Conference Paper on Mechatronics Award, 2017
 * University of Michigan's Mechanical Engineering Department Achievement Award, 2017
 * Russell Severance Springer Visiting professor at UC Berkeley, 2018
 * University of Michigan's Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award, 2019
 * University of Michigan's Integrative Systems and Design (ISD) Distinguished Faculty Award, 2022
 * IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics Best Transaction Paper Award Finalist, 2021
 * Distinguished International Visiting Scholar Award, University of Waterloo, 2020
 * University of Michigan's Raymond J. and Monica E. Schultz Outreach and Diversity Award, 2020
 * IEEE/ASME Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics Best Paper Award, 2022
 * Recognized by SME as one of the 25 Leaders Transforming Manufacturing, 2022
 * University of Michigan's Miller Faculty Scholar Award, 2022
 * University of Michigan's Robert M. Caddell Memorial Awards for Research, 2023

Selected publications

 * Ramani, Keval S., Chuan He, Yueh-Lin Tsai, and Chinedum E. Okwudire. "SmartScan: An intelligent scanning approach for uniform thermal distribution, reduced residual stresses and deformations in PBF additive manufacturing." Additive Manufacturing 52 (2022): 102643.
 * Okwudire, Chinedum E., and Harsha V. Madhyastha. "Distributed manufacturing for and by the masses." Science 372, no. 6540 (2021): 341–342.
 * Duan, Molong, Deokkyun Yoon, and Chinedum E. Okwudire. "A limited-preview filtered B-spline approach to tracking control–With application to vibration-induced error compensation of a 3D printer." Mechatronics 56 (2018): 287–296.