NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and Scarbo Performance to deliver keynotes at 2025 AMUG Conference

News
January 16, 2025

January 16, 2025

AMUG’s 2025 keynote speakers: Joe Scarbo (left), president, CEO, and founder of the performance-vehicle-focused Scarbo Performance Corp. and Ryan Watkins (right), research engineer and technologist for NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Courtesy AMUG)
AMUG’s 2025 keynote speakers: Joe Scarbo (left), president, CEO, and founder of the performance-vehicle-focused Scarbo Performance Corp. and Ryan Watkins (right), research engineer and technologist for NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Courtesy AMUG)

The Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) has announced its keynote speakers for the 2025 AMUG Conference, which will be held in Chicago, Illinois, USA, from March 30 – April 3, 2025. Ryan Watkins, a Research Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), will take the stage on Tuesday, April 1, followed by Joe Scarbo, President of Scarbo Performance Corp, on Thursday, April 3.

Watkins’ and Scarbo’s work spans from the Baja Desert to Aspen Mountain to Pikes Peak and extends into the solar system. Their keynote presentations will showcase vehicle designs and space exploration achievements. Through accounts of past and present projects, they will demonstrate how pragmatic decision-making combined with innovation pushes the boundaries of what’s possible with Additive Manufacturing.

THE WORLD OF METAL AM TO YOUR INBOX
Subscribe to our twice-weekly newsletter
Register now

Watkins’ keynote presentation will focus on ‘linking design with Additive Manufacturing’ in the context of developing additively manufactured, crushable structures for high-speed impact attenuation applications. He will explain why NASA needed to create this new class of crushable structures and describe how his team overcame manufacturing and design challenges. More significantly, he will share his journey of introducing new technology into the conservative aerospace engineering field, including both successes and failures.

Scarbo will convey how, when, and why his company used Additive Manufacturing in its most recent performance vehicles. Under the Scarbo Vintage (SV) brand, his team has created the SV RSR, which raced in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb as Ken Block’s Hoonipigasus, and the SV Rover, which ran in the Baja 1000. Following the Baja race, the SV Rover transitioned into the world’s first street-legal Hypertruck, powered by a 1,100-horsepower supercharged V8 or a 1,000-horsepower electric drive.

Both SV vehicles feature numerous additively manufactured parts. Throughout his keynote presentation, Scarbo will present his thoughts on why Additive Manufacturing was – or was not – the right process – thoughts that are grounded in his mechanical engineering, welding, machining, and racing pedigrees.

Watkins will explain why NASA needed to create a new class of crushable structures and describe how his team overcame manufacturing and design challenges (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Watkins will explain why NASA needed to create a new class of crushable structures and describe how his team overcame manufacturing and design challenges (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Ryan Watkins

Ryan Watkins joined NASA’s JPL nine years ago after earning a PhD in aerospace engineering. He has worked on flight projects as a structural analyst and cognizant engineer, leading the design, build, test, and integration of launch restraint hardware for NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) and NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) missions.

In his current role as a Research Engineer in the Materials Development & Additive Manufacturing group, Watkins focuses on the integration of advanced materials with computational design, such as topology optimisation, to enable and support future NASA missions. This work includes generalising topology optimisation to complex material systems, additively manufacturing and modelling lattice structures, and Additive Manufacturing shape memory alloy systems. He also works to develop and foster JPL’s topology optimisation capabilities and integrate the requisite workflows into flight project practices.

In December 2024, JPL won 3D Printing Industry Award’s Aerospace, Space, and Defense Application category for Watkins’ work on additively manufactured, crushable lattices. Also in 2024, his software, UnitcellHub, was named JPL’s Software of the Year and was open-sourced to the public.

Scarbo Performance is an engineering consultancy specialising in performance vehicles. Under the Scarbo Vintage brand, the team has created the SV Rover which ran in the Baja 1000 (Courtesy Scarbo Performance)
Scarbo Performance is an engineering consultancy specialising in performance vehicles. Under the Scarbo Vintage brand, the team has created the SV Rover which ran in the Baja 1000 (Courtesy Scarbo Performance)

Joe Scarbo

Joe Scarbo founded Scarbo Performance in 2008 as an engineering consultancy specialising in performance vehicles. In 2013, the company shifted to low-volume manufacturing of motorsport products and complete vehicles. Today, Scarbo Performance Corp includes four businesses that offer design (for both automotive and non-automotive products), performance after-market components, and bespoke vehicle manufacturing. Since its inception, Scarbo Performance has built more than thirty vehicles for other companies.

Scarbo earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering and, while at college, took on a job designing and machining components for the Arciero Racing family. Following on from college, Scarbo went to work as an in-house mechanical design engineer for the Volkswagen Motorsport off-road race programme – Baja racing with the Toureg TDI – and continued to work on elite projects with global leaders.

Attracted to the possibilities of Additive Manufacturing, Scarbo took a position with an Orange County, California, firm that leverages the technology in design and prototyping work for its clients’ projects. That experience opened the door for Scarbo to become director of mechanical design for a consumer electronics company, where he leveraged Additive Manufacturing for design and testing. While the work was interesting and the experience valuable, Scarbo’s passion for motorsports led him to rededicate his time to Scarbo Performance.

Those who wish to register for the event can do so here.

www.jpl.nasa.gov

www.scarboperformance.com

www.amug.com

News
January 16, 2025

In the latest issue of Metal AM magazine

Download PDF
 

Extensive AM industry news coverage, as well as the following exclusive deep-dive articles:

  • Aluminium Additive Manufacturing: How a new generation of alloys will fuel industry growth
  • Shaping a national Additive Manufacturing ecosystem: The strategic growth of metal AM in Türkiye
  • How metal Additive Manufacturing is transforming modern hydraulic systems
  • High-performance product development in the era of computational design: a case study with nTop and NASA
  • The Additive Manufacturing of record-breaking pure copper heatsinks for high-performance computing applications
  • The Additive Manufacturing of tool steels: how non-linear modelling enables precise hardness control

Join 40,000+ other AM professionals – follow us online

Don’t miss a thing – register for our newsletter

Don't miss any new issue of Metal AM magazine, and get the latest industry news. Sign up to our twice weekly newsletter.

Register now

Looking for AM machines, metal powders or part manufacturing services?

Discover suppliers of these and more in our comprehensive advertisers’ index and buyer’s guide, available in the back of Metal AM magazine.

  • AM machines
  • Process monitoring & calibration
  • Heat treatment & sintering
  • HIP systems & services
  • Pre- & post-processing technology
  • Powders, powder production and analysis
  • Part manufacturers
  • Consulting, training & market data
Find suppliers

About Metal Additive Manufacturing magazine

Metal AM magazine, published quarterly in digital and print formats, is read by a rapidly expanding international audience.

Our audience includes component manufacturers, end-users, materials and equipment suppliers, analysts, researchers and more.

In addition to providing extensive industry news coverage, Metal AM magazine is known for exclusive, in-depth articles and technical reports.

Our focus is the entire metal AM process from design to application.

Each issue is available as an easy-to-navigate digital edition and a high-quality print publication.

Discover our magazine archive…

The free to access Metal Additive Manufacturing magazine archive offers unparalleled insight into the world of metal Additive Manufacturing from a commercial and technological perspective through:

  • Reports on visits to leading metal AM part manufacturers and industry suppliers
  • Articles on technology and application trends
  • Information on materials developments
  • Reviews of key technical presentations from the international conference circuit
  • International industry news

All past issues are available to download as free PDFs or view in your browser.

Browse the archive

Share via
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap