WOMEN IN THE INDUSTRY
Alex Kingsbury She understands what it means to meaningfully connect industry to research and development activity. Alex’s volunteer roles include sitting as the independent expert on the Standards Australia Additive Manufacturing Technical Committee, Chair of Oceania for Women in 3D Printing, and TCT Expert Advisory board member. Alex holds a Bachelor of Engineering (1st Class Honours) with a major in metals processing from RMIT University in Melbourne and is also a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT University.
Alex Kingsbury is an Additive Manufacturing Industry Fellow at RMIT University, where she works to enhance links between industry and the university. These links extend across research, and teaching and learning functions at the university. Previously, Alex was the Research Group Leader for Additive Manufacturing and the Director of CSIRO’s Additive Manufacturing Innovation Centre ‘Lab22’—a metal additive manufacturing centre for industry access and research and development. In these roles, she oversaw CSIRO’s additive manufacturing research projects, both strategic and industry funded.
A known authority on additive manufacturing technologies, Alex is frequently called upon for expert opinion on additive technologies, the global marketplace for additive manufacturing, and forecasts for the additive manufacturing market. She has spoken at international conferences, contributed to highly respected industry publications, and worked across the media formats of television, print and radio. Alex provided Materials Australia with some thoughts on what it’s like to be a materials engineer.
From Alex Kingsbury I never set out to be a materials researcher, but here we are! I didn’t come from an engineering, or even a scientific family. But, an aptitude and keen interest in maths and chemistry, plus a fascination with how things worked led me to choose to study chemical engineering. After having spent some time consulting to the mining and oil and gas industries, I joined CSIRO to work as an engineer on their commercialisation projects. I was immediately thrown into the deep end of titanium metal powder research and development projects, both making it and consolidating it via a number of different processes. It was 2011, just as a process called metal additive manufacturing, also known as rapid prototyping or 3D printing, was just taking off. Little did I know, my career was just about to take off too! Additive manufacturing, as I am sure most of you are aware, is a process where you add material layer by layer. This is as opposed to subtractive manufacturing, where an item is machined out of billet, rod or plate.
Together with AMTIL, a manufacturing association, Alex established a national industry network called the Additive Manufacturing Hub, a body representing the interests and concerns of additive manufacturing businesses in Australia. This program of local industry engagement was the first of its kind in Australia for the additive manufacturing industry. Alex has experience in electron beam, laser, binder jetting and kinetic deposition additive technologies. She has worked more broadly in metal technologies including additive manufacturing since 2011, with a focus on powder and wire-based additive manufacturing technologies. 20 | SEPTEMBER 2021
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