Thermo-Calc Software, Stockholm, announces a new professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering: “Thermo-Calc Professor of the Practice.” The purpose of the position is to bring in someone with an advanced career in industry, such as a CEO, to provide practical experience at a high level in the area of computational materials science. Professor Gregory B. Olson, co-founder of QuesTek Innovations LLC, has been selected as the first Thermo-Calc Professor of the Practice, to begin in January 2020.
Professor Olson has a strong background in academia, having held a tenured professorship at Northwestern University for over 30 years, but it is his experience in industry that earned him the position at MIT. In 1997, Professor Olson founded QuesTek Innovations, the first company dedicated to designing materials through computational engineering. In his work at the company, Professor Olson developed systems for rapid material design based on computational tools.
In fact, QuesTek Innovations developed the first documented commercial alloy through computational steel design, and it has since grown into a global leader of Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME). As a result of this success, many consider Professor Olson “the father of ICME.”
The purpose of the Thermo-Calc Professor of the Practice position is for experts who have created their own successful practice, to teach about the entrepreneurial side of materials science and engineering. Professor Olson’s experience in co-founding and building a world-renowned company will allow him to teach beyond the classroom, and focus his curriculum on computational tools for designing and developing new alloys and processes.
Thermo-Calc Software grew out of three joint dissertation projects at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and it remains closely linked to its academic roots. The majority owner of Thermo-Calc Software is the non-profit foundation “Stiftelsen för Tillämpad Termodynamik” (STT), the purpose of which is to support research in the field of computational thermodynamics. STT achieves this goal by annually distributing scholarships to young researchers who are active in the field. This goal is further met through the company by providing educational resources developed in collaboration with KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Thermo-Calc Software also actively supports university research programs in Sweden, the United States, and China, and provides numerous training programs, educational videos, webinars, and workshops for undergraduate, post-graduate, and continuing workforce development.
