Professor Mendez is the Weldco/Industry Chair in Welding and Joining and Director of Canadian Centre for Welding and Joining at University of Alberta. His teaching and research focus on physics and mathematics of welding and materials processing, including heat transfer, magnetohydrodynamics, arc plasma, thermodynamics, and kinetics. Applications include wear protection for mining, and oil extraction, alloy development, procedure development, new welding processes such as laser cladding, casting, solidification, and direct metal additive manufacturing using semi-solid processing.

Before joining the University of Alberta in January 2009, he taught and researched at the Colorado School of Mines. Before that, he was a consulting engineer at Exponent Inc. In 1995 Dr. Mendez co-founded Semi-Solid Technologies Inc. in Cambridge, MA. Prof. Mendez holds a Ph.D. and a M.S. degree in Materials Engineering MIT, and a Mechanical Engineer degree from the University of Buenos Aires. He is a Fellow of the AWS and the CWA. Awards include, UofA Outstanding Mentorship in Undergraduate Research, AWS William Irrgang Award, IIW Kenneth Easterling Award, the ASM Brian Ives Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the MIT Rocca Fellowship, and UBA Research Fellowship. He has 68 indexed publications and 9 patents.

His teaching and research focus on physics and mathematics of welding and materials processing, including heat transfer, magnetohydrodynamics, arc plasma, thermodynamics, and kinetics. Applications include wear protection for mining, and oil extraction, alloy development, procedure development, new welding processes such as laser cladding, casting, solidification, and direct metal additive manufacturing using semi-solid processing.

Professor

Director (CCWJ)

Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering

University of Alberta