November 9, 2023
By Ashley Ritchie

Aaron Stebner, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has been appointed Eugene C. Gwaltney Jr. Chair in Manufacturing for his outstanding research accomplishments, leadership in his field, and the contributions he has made to Georgia Tech and the Woodruff School.

Stebner will hold the position for a five-year term and will receive discretionary funding to support his educational and research activities.

“Aaron is a trailblazer in his field, and in just a few years, has made a profound impact on the Woodruff School and the Institute through his incredible leadership and innovations,” said Devesh Ranjan, Eugene C. Gwaltney, Jr. School Chair. “We are grateful to the Gwaltney family for their generous support which will allow Aaron to continue to grow his research.”

Stebner works at the intersection of manufacturing, machine learning, materials, and mechanics. He is co-director of the statewide partnership of more than 40 nonprofits, colleges, and universities executing all of the projects within the Georgia AI Manufacturing (GA-AIM) technology corridor grant, a $65 million grant announced by the White House last year. He is leading the largest of nine projects that will allow him and Georgia Tech to transform the Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility (AMPF) into the Artificial Intelligence Manufacturing Pilot Facility (AI-MPF).

Stebner joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 2020. Previously, he was the Rowlinson Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at the Colorado School of Mines from 2013-2020; a postdoctoral scholar at the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology from 2012-2013; a lecturer in the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University from 2009-2012; a research scientist at Telezygology Inc. from 2008-2009; a research fellow at the NASA Glenn Research Center from 2006-2008; and a mechanical engineer at the Electric Device Corporation from 1995-2000.

Stebner has won numerous awards, including an NSF CAREER award in 2014, the Colorado School of Mines Researcher of the Year Award in 2017, a Visiting Professor Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Preservation of Science (JSPS) in 2019, and the Woodruff School’s Research Award earlier this year.

Stebner serves as a board member of the ASM International Organization on Shape Memory and Superelastic Technologies (SMST) and as an international advisory committee member of the International Conference on Martensitic Transformations (ICOMAT). His research group is part of the joint industry-government-academia Consortium for the Advancement of Shape Memory Alloy Research and Technology (CASMART). Stebner is also an associate editor for the journal Additive Manufacturing.

He received his B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Akron in 2005 and 2008, respectively. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University in 2012.