Prof. Diran Apelian
Researcher & Educator
Diran Apelian is Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, Strategy officer for the Samueli School of Engineering, and Director of the Advanced Casting Research Center at UCI. He is also Provost Emeritus and Founding Director of the Metal Processing Institute at WPI, Worcester, Mass.
He received his B.S. degree in metallurgical engineering from Drexel University in 1968 and his doctorate in materials science and engineering from MIT in 1972.
He worked at Bethlehem Steel’s Homer Research Laboratories before joining Drexel University’s faculty in 1976. At Drexel he held various positions, including professor, head of the Department of Materials Engineering, associate dean of the College of Engineering and vice-provost of the University. He joined WPI in July 1990 as WPI’s Provost. In 1996 he returned to the faculty and led the activities of the Metal Processing Institute, which he founded. On July 2019, he joined the faculty of University of California, Irvine.
He is credited with pioneering work in various areas of solidification processing, metal processing, powder metallurgy and digital manufacturing. In addition, he has contributed to the establishment of research in resource recovery, reuse, and recycling. He is the Founding Editor of the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy. Apelian is the recipient of many distinguished honors and awards – national and international; he has over 600 publications to his credit, and 21 patents; and serves on several technical, corporate and editorial boards. With his colleagues and students, he has founded 6 companies: Materials Strategies; Battery Resourcers; Melt Cognition; Kinetic Batteries, Solvus Ventures, and Solvus Global.
During 2008/2009, he served as President of TMS. He served as Chair of the ASM Educational Foundation Board of Trustees (2016-2018). Apelian is a Fellow of TMS, ASM, and APMI; he is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the European Academy of Sciences, and the Armenian Academy of Sciences. The 2016 Bernard Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering Education was awarded to WPI (Recipients: D. Apelian, K. Wobbe, A. Heinricher and R. Vaz). He was recognized as WPI Innovator of the Year in 2018, and as UCI’s Innovator of the year in 2020.
https://acrc.manufacturing.uci.edu
dapelian@uci.edu