Introduction
Dr. Brodan Richter joined the University of St. Thomas as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in Fall 2025. Dr. Richter completed his BS, MS, and PhD degrees at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. His PhD research focused on the "Conduction-Mode and Keyhole-Mode Laser Polishing of Additively Manufactured Cobalt Chromium Surfaces," and his MS research studied "The Effect of Localized Surface Chemistry on Laser Remelting of Cast Aluminum". After his PhD, Dr. Richter joined the Advanced Materials and Processing Branch at NASA Langley Research Center as a Research Materials Engineer. At NASA, Dr. Richter conducted basic science research focused on understanding and simulating process-structure-property-performance relationships for additively manufactured metallic alloys using computational materials engineering techniques.
Dr. Richter's current research focuses on developing new computational materials engineering techniques to understand process-structure-property-performance relationships for solidification-based manufacturing processes, specifically powder bed fusion & directed energy deposition additive manufacturing, welding, laser remelting, and casting. His expertise includes additive manufacturing, metallurgy, heat transfer & computational fluid dynamics simulations, microstructure and phase evolution modeling, and reduced-order modeling of physical phenomena.