Dr. Laurentiu Nastac

Education

• Ph.D., Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, The University of Alabama
• M.S., Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, The University of Alabama
• Diploma Engineer, Metallurgical Engineering, University Politehnica Bucharest, Romania

Biography

Dr. Laurentiu Nastac is currently an associate professor of metallurgical and materials engineering at The University of Alabama, a key Foundry Educational Foundation, or FEF, professor, director of the Solidification and Ultrasonic Laboratory and of the UA engineering foundry. For his teaching and research interests, please visit his website http://lnastac.people.ua.edu/.

Nastac received the diploma engineering degree in metallurgy and materials science from the University “Politehnica” of Bucharest, Romania in 1985 and the master’s and doctorate degrees in metallurgical and materials engineering from The University of Alabama in 1993 and 1995, respectively. He has held various engineering, research, and academic positions in Romania and USA.

At Caterpillar, he conducted research in the area of macro transport and solidification-kinetics modeling and developed specialized casting simulation software. At Concurrent Technologies Corporation, he conducted research primarily in the area of advanced manufacturing processes with emphasis on the modeling and simulation of solidification and casting phenomena.

In 2019, Nastac was awarded an AFRL SFFP Summer Faculty Fellowship at AF Wright Patterson Dayton, Ohio, in metals additive manufacturing science, where he developed software tools for microstructure evolution prediction of Ti64- alloys processed via Electron Beam Powder Bed Fusion.

Nastac’s professional activity is reflected by eight developed software tools, three patents, 285 publications including 80 journal papers, 114 conference proceedings papers, 20 books and CD proceedings and a monograph on microstructure modeling published by Springer in 2004, and more than 200 conference presentations. In addition, while at UA, he taught nine different courses, developed three new courses, graduated seven doctorate students and three master’s students, conducted 18 research projects, designed in 2011-2012 the new foundry layout, and, as the key FEF professor, acquired the FEF foundry certifications in 2013 and 2018.

Honors and Awards

• 1999: Bunshah Best Paper Award, L. Nastac, J.-S. Chou, and Y. Pang, Assessment of solidification Kinetics Parameters for Titanium Base Alloys, International Symposium on Liquid Metals Processing and Casting, American Vacuum Society, Vacuum Metallurgy Division, Santa Fe, NM, Feb. 20-24, 1999.
• 2017: L. Nastac and D. M. Stefanescu, Stochastic Modeling of Microstructure Formation in Solidification Processes, Modeling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering (MSMSE), Institute of Physics Publishing, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 391-420, 1997:  selected by the MSME Editors-in-Chief for inclusion in the “MSMSE 25^th Anniversary” collection (October 2017).
• 2019: AFRL SFFP Summer Faculty Fellowship Award at AF Wright Patterson Dayton, Ohio (Metals Additive Manufacturing Science)