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ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES •
APRIL 2014
13
ASM announces emerging technologies survey results
ASM International’s (Materials Park, Ohio) Emerging Technologies Awareness Committee re-
cently conducted a survey of several hundred ASM members to gain feedback on technologies that
members believe will have the most impact on the future of materials science and engineering. Respon-
dents were asked to name three materials-related technologies and three process-related develop-
ments expected to have a significant impact within the next few years. Respondents were further asked
to clarify which of these technology developments they expect to have the single greatest impact.
“One of the goals of ASM’s Emerging Technologies Awareness Committee is to identify the latest trends
and areas of interest within materials engineering. Surveys such as this are very helpful, in that they gather
feedback on leading-edge topics that ASM can then build content and courses around,” says committee chair
Roger Narayan, FASM, professor of biomedical engineering at North Carolina State University, Raleigh.
Of the 300 total responses, most could be placed into 11 major categories including: Additive manufactur-
ing/3D printing; biomedical or bio-basedmaterials; energy materials such as fuel cells and batteries; environmen-
tally friendly/recycled or substitute materials; high-performance materials for light weight, high strength, high
temperature applications; integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) and computational model-
ing; welding and joining; metals processing technologies; nanomaterials and nanomanufacturing; smart or mul-
tifunctional materials; and surface coatings/engineering. Of these categories, the top five included
high-performance materials (66 responses), energy materials (50 responses), additive manufacturing (39 re-
sponses), nanotechnology (35 responses), and ICME (26 responses). The survey was not intended to provide sta-
tistically significant data, but rather to gain a deeper understanding of what members perceive to be the most
promising next-generation technologies related tomaterials engineering.
For more information: Frances Richards,
440/338-5151 ext. 5563,
frances.richards@asminternational.org,
www.asminternational.org.
Emerging
technologies such as
bio-based materials,
3D printing, and
nanotechnology
scored highly on
ASM’s recent
membership survey
about next-generation
materials and
processes likely to
have the greatest
impact on society
over the next few
years. Images
courtesy of the
Smithsonian, Purdue
University, Lawrence
Berkeley National Lab,
and University of
Pennsylvania.