Thomas Kurfess begins term as ASME’s 142nd President

Thomas Kurfess, Ph.D., P.E., has begun his term as the 142^nd President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Kurfess is an ASME Fellow and has served as a member of the Board of Governors since 2019.

Kurfess is the Chief Manufacturing Officer of the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Executive Director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute. He is the HUSCO/Ramirez Distinguished Chair in Fluid Power and Motion Control and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. He also serves as the Chief Technology Officer at the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences. He served as the Chief Manufacturing Officer and founding Director for the manufacturing science division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2019 to 2021. He served as the Assistant Director for Advanced Manufacturing at the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President of the United States of America in 2012 and 2013, coordinating advanced manufacturing research and development.

Kurfess has been an active member of ASME for more than 30 years, holding a variety of volunteer positions, including member at large for the ASME Council on Standards and Certification and the ASME Committee on Government Relations, and chair of the ASME Manufacturing Public Policy Task Force. He is the recipient of several ASME awards including the Pi Tau Sigma Award, the Blackall Machine Tool and Gage Award, and the Gustus L. Larson Award.

Kurfess earned Bachelor’s, Master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the design and development of advanced manufacturing systems targeting secure digital manufacturing, additive and subtractive processes, and large-scale production enterprises. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). He was president of SME in 2018.

In addition, the ASME Board of Governors voted and appointed Andrew S. Bicos, Ph.D., to an open position for the fiscal year 2024, following his three-year term that ends June 30, 2023. He is an independent consultant, recently retired from The Boeing Company after more than 30 years in executive management in the research and development organisation. He has been an ASME member since college and actively involved with the Society for more than 25 years, starting on the Adaptive Structures and Material Systems Technical Committee. He also served on boards of award and conference organising committees. He served as Aerospace Division chair from 2003 to 2004. He joined the Industry Advisory Board (IAB) in 2002 as the Boeing representative and served as chair of the IAB from 2014 until 2016. In 2004, he became co-chair of the Aerospace/NASA R&T Task Force of the Inter-Sector Committee on Federal R&D, serving in that role until 2017. In 2016, Bicos was selected as an ASME Federal Fellow serving in the office of Congressman Tom Reed (NY-23) where his responsibilities included manufacturing and energy policy. In 2018, he chaired the Presidential Task Force on Membership. In addition, he recently served on the Government Relations Committee and is a member of the Manufacturing Public Policy Task Force.

Bicos is a member of the California State University at Los Angeles President’s Council. He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Center for Manufacturing Science and on the National Research Council Committee on Space-Based Additive Manufacturing. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering and Master of Business Administration degree from University of California, Los Angeles, and Master of Science and doctoral degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University.