Engineer works to improve quality of additive manufacturing processes February 17, 2021 SHARE Patricia Weisensee, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a $557,000 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. The five-year award will support Weisensee’s research into the effects of additive manufacturing process on the material properties of printed metals. Weisensee Additive manufacturing, a type of 3D printing with metals, has been used since the 1980s to create biomedical implants and parts for airplanes and automobiles. It allows for rapid model prototyping and parts with more complex geometries as compared with traditional casting. Weisensee plans to improve the quality of the products, which tend to vary from piece to piece, by studying the underlying physical processes using a unique imaging setup.