Doctor Patricio Mendez is the Weldco/Industry Chair in Welding and Joining and Director of the Canadian Centre for Welding and Joining at the University of Alberta. His teaching and research focus on the physics and mathematics of welding and materials processing, including heat transfer, magnetohydrodynamics, arc plasma, thermodynamics, and kinetics. Applications of his work include wear protection for mining and oil extraction, alloy development, procedure development, new welding processes such as laser cladding, casting, solidification, and direct metal additive manufacturing using semi-solid processing.
Prior to joining the University of Alberta in January of 2009, he taught and researched at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. Before that, he was a consulting engineer at Exponent Inc. In 1995 Dr. Mendez co-founded Semi-Solid Technologies Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Professsor Mendez holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Materials Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Buenos Aires. He is also a Fellow of the AWS and the CWA. His awards include the University of Alberta Award for Outstanding Mentorship in Undergraduate Research, the AWS William Irrgang Award, the IIW Kenneth Easterling Award, the ASM Brian Ives Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the MIT Rocca Fellowship, and a UBA Research Fellowship. He has 88 indexed publications and 10 patents.
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