DesiderioKovar

About

Kovar has been on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin since 1997. He holds the BFGoodrich Professorship in Materials Engineering and is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor. Kovar is a member of the Texas Materials Institute, is affiliated with the Center for Electromechanics, and is a core member of the Center for Additive Manufacturing and Design Innovation at the University of Texas at Austin. He teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in the Materials Engineering area of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Kovar has supervised or co-supervised the independent research of 54 undergraduate students, 24 MS theses, and 23 Ph.D. dissertations, and he is currently supervising 1 post-doctoral researcher and supervising/co-supervising 6 graduate students and 2 undergraduate students.

In 2013, he founded the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Longhorn Maker Studio, a makerspace equipped with a range of equipment, including 3D printers, laser cutters, and other equipment that allows students to take their projects from conceptualization to fabrication. He served as the inaugural Faculty Director for the Longhorn Maker Studio from its inception until March of 2016, when a full-time director was hired, and the facility was renamed Texas Inventionworks. From 2012-2016, he chaired the Mechanical Engineering Department’s curriculum committee, where he spearheaded a number of successful reforms that improved student learning and significantly increased student retention. This included a college-wide reorganization of the mathematics curriculum in Engineering. In 2018, he headed the effort to create the Materials Science and Engineering minor, the first minor in Engineering and has served as the faculty advisor for the minor since its inception. From 2005-2018, he served as Graduate Advisor for the Materials Science and Engineering Graduate Program, which has an enrollment of approximately 80 MS and Ph.D. students. In 2012, he was recognized as the University of Texas’ Outstanding Graduate Advisor. He served as Area Coordinator for the Materials Engineering Area of Mechanical Engineering from 2017 to 2022 and is currently the Associate Chair for Academics for the Mechanical Engineering Department. He is active in the American Ceramic Society’s Basic Science Division and is a member of the organizing committee for the International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium, one of the largest academic conferences dedicated to additive manufacturing.

Kovar has published over 110 journal articles, conference proceedings, patents, and reports. He is studying micro-cold spray manufacturing, which allows metallic, ceramic, and composite films to be directly written at room temperature onto almost any substrate material. He is also developing selective laser flash sintering, a new manufacturing process he co-invented for additively manufacturing bulk ceramics. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, the Army Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Research Laboratory through America Makes, as well as a number of corporate sponsors.

Educational Qualifications

• Ph.D., Materials Science and Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 1995
• M.S., Materials Science and Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 1992
• B.S., Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1990

Select Awards & Honors

• Academy of Distinguished Teachers – The University of Texas at Austin (2019)
• Award for Teaching Excellence – Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering (2016)
• Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company Award for Excellence in Engineering Teaching – The University of Texas at Austin (2016)
• Jack and Maxine Zarrow Family K-16 Teaching Innovation Award (2014)
• Outstanding Graduate Advisor – The University of Texas at Austin (2012)
• Listed in Who’s Who in Science and Engineering (2007–present)
• Teaching Excellence Award – Student Engineering Council, The University of Texas at Austin (2000)
• Engineering Foundation Young Faculty Excellence Award – The University of Texas at Austin (2000)

Related Websites

• Kovar Research Group website

Select Publications