Rai receives ASME’s Computers and Information in Engineering Division Young Engineer Award

MAE's Rahul Rai received the Young Engineering Award from ASME's Computers and Information Division.

Professor Ian Grosse, chair ​of the ASME Computers and Information in Engineering Division and a professor at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst (left) presents Rahul Rai with the Young Engineer Award at ASME’s International Design Engineering Technical Conference (IDETC).

by Jane Stoyle Welch

Published October 16, 2017 This content is archived.

Rahul Rai, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, received the Young Engineer Award from the Computers and Information in Engineering Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

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"Rahul has made significant scholarly contributions to a number of important areas in engineering design and optimization, and is a leader in digital design and manufacturing research."
Kemper Lewis, professor and chair
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

The award recognizes “a promising young investigator who is making outstanding contributions to the progress in the application of computers in engineering.”

Established in 2008, selection for the award is based on the nominee’s achievements, testimonials from peers, and the promise of significant impact on computers and information in engineering. Candidates must be under 40 at the time of nomination as well as a member in good standing of ASME.

“Rahul has made significant scholarly contributions to a number of important areas in engineering design and optimization, and is a leader in digital design and manufacturing research," said Kemper Lewis, professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. “We are very proud that he has been recognized with this well-deserved award.”

Rai serves as director of UB’s Manufacturing and Design Laboratory (MADLab), and is part of the Executive Committee and Technical Advisory Committee of the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII). He is a founding faculty member of UB’s Digital Additive Manufacturing Center and a faculty member in the UB SMART Community of Excellence.

In addition to ASME, Rai is a member of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

Rai’s research interests include digital manufacturing, engineering design, machine learning, computational geometry, uncertainty quantification in complex system design, additive manufacturing, applied ontology, multimodal intuitive interfaces for conceptual CAD, optimization, metamodeling, and design of experiments.

He joined UB's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2012. Prior to that, he was an assistant professor at California State University in Fresno, and a post-doctoral Fellow at the NSF Center for e-Design at Virginia Tech. He earned his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006.

The award was presented at ASME’s International Design Engineering Technical Conference (IDETC), which was held on August 6-9, 2017, in Cleveland, Ohio.