Abdalla Nassar, PhD

Abdalla is dedicated to establishing InSPIRE as the premier national hub for advanced manufacturing and industrial collaboration. He brings over 15 years of experience in advanced research and development, strategic planning, and project management.

Abdalla supports InSPIRE as a member of ASTRO America, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, non-partisan research institute and think tank. Prior to Joining ASTRO America, he served as Enterprise Additive Manufacturing (AM) Lead for John Deere. In this role, he developed and implemented long-term strategies and roadmaps for AM throughout the global organization and served as the AM competency lead, coordinating research and development, supplier engagement, training, standards development, and collaboration with dozens of business units worldwide.

Prior to this, Abdalla served as a department head within the Materials Science Division of the Applied Research Laboratory and as an Associate Research Professor at Penn State. There he managed and mentored a team of faculty, engineers, and support specialists executing fundamental and applied programs and transitioning critical technologies for industry and government sponsors. He also developed and taught courses on Engineering and Scientific Principles of AM and Laser-Materials Interactions at the graduate level.

Abdalla has successfully led numerous government and industry-funded programs, obtained over $10M in external funding, published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, received over a dozen patents and invention disclosures, and is a co-author of a 2023 textbook published by Springer, Additive Manufacturing with Metals - Design, Processes, Materials, Quality Assurance, and Applications.

He received his B.S. degree in Engineering Science in 2008 and his Ph.D. in Engineering Science and Mechanics in 2012, both from Penn State. Abdalla has received several professional recognitions, including the 2020 Freeform and AM Excellence (FAME) Jr. Award, 2020 Applied Research Laboratory Research Publication award, and the 2021 BEYA Modern Day Technology Leader and Science Spectrum Trailblazer awards.