Diran Apelian
University of California, Irvine
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 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. He was recognized as WPI Innovator of the Year in 2018, and as UCI’s Innovator of the year in 2020.