Dr Chinnapat Panwisawas and his research group members have welcomed Professor Peter Collins, Stanley Chair in Interdisciplinary Engineering and Professor, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Iowa State University, USA who had led the 12 undergraduate students at Iowa State to visit Queen Mary on Tuesday, 19th May 2026.

Professor Collins has delivered a SEMS Seminar on "Progress in Additively Manufactured Gradient Materials: Predicting, Making, and Qualifying," 15:00 – 16:00 hr in Room PP1, People’s Palace. His research interests involve: physical metallurgy; advanced characterisation techniques; quantification of defects and crystal orientation across length scales; advanced materials processing with special interest in additive manufacturing; and the mechanical behaviour of non-ferrous materials, including establishing composition-microstructure property relationships. He has conducted basic and applied research on metal-based additive manufacturing for over 20 years, emphasising qualification strategies and gradient materials. He has received multiple awards for teaching and his research, and has ~100 publications, 50+ invited talks, multiple US patents, and most recently has joined as co-author of the 14th edition of the textbook “DeGarmo’s Materials and Processes in Manufacturing”.

His talk described how multiple gradients could be achieved, and some technical advances in the modelling associated with achieving sufficiently precise gradients. To develop the predictive tools necessary for design engineers to incorporate spatially varying properties, he greatly presented an effort to predict the processing-materials state-properties-performance relationships in Ti-based gradient structures where both composition and aging temperatures are spatially controlled. He presented a new concept of feasibility diagrams for processing to feasibility diagrams of inspectability to complimenting qualification (including post-manufacture nondestructive evaluation (NDE)).

Dr Panwisawas has started some initial research discussion and collaboration in the gradient materials with Professor Collins to jointly develop research programmes in the near future.