After receiving his doctorate in 2009, Okwudire joined
DMG Mori Seiki Co. in 2010 as a senior mechanical engineer and systems optimization team leader before joining the University of Michigan faculty in 2011 as an assistant professor. In 2017, he was promoted to the rank of associate professor, and in 2023 he was promoted to the rank of Full Professor at the University of Michigan. He also served as the Associate Chair of Integrative Systems + Design (ISD) at the University of Michigan from 2019 to 2021. by using software driven vibration compensation to maintain high print quality. The importance of software driven vibration compensation as a tool for boosting FFF 3D printing speeds was originally popularized by research from the Smart and Sustainable Automation Research Lab at the University of Michigan in 2017. As the 3D printing community grappled with how to introduce vibration compensation to open-source firmware, in early 2020, Okwudire encouraged members of the community on a public online forum to explore
input shaping as a simpler alternative to the more-advanced FBS (filtered B-splines) approach that his research group had used in their 2017 research. The
Marlin firmware team has also introduced input shaping to its open-source firmware. The underlying framework for many of the available input shaping algorithms currently available in Marlin is enabled by Fixed-Time Motion contributed to the Marlin open-source project by Ulendo Technologies, Inc. Okwudire has shown through his research that the FBS algorithm produces better vibration compensation than input shaping because it eliminates vibration without causing corner rounding and other motion errors induced by input shaping. The FBS algorithm has been licensed from the University of Michigan by Ulendo Technologies, Inc., as part of its Ulendo VC suite of software for vibration compensation of 3D printers. In recognition of the impact of his research and entrepreneurship in advancing 3D printing automation, in 2022 Okwudire was named by
SME (formerly, the society of Manufacturing Engineers) as one of the 25 Leaders Transforming Manufacturing. Okwudire and his research group have continued their work on developing new methods and algorithms for improving manufacturing automation, for example, their SmartScan algorithm for reducing residual stress and shape distortion in laser-based 3D printing of metals. Okwudire is also a strong champion for diversity, equity and inclusion in the academe. In 2018, he and Professor
Lola Eniola-Adefeso, co-established the NextProf Pathfinder Workshop, a future-faculty program specifically aimed at first- and second-year PhD students, rather than final year PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, as is typical in many other institutions. The goal of the Pathfinder workshop is to equip the attendees – mostly women and students from underrepresented groups – with the knowledge and skills needed to develop strong CVs, early in their PhD process, to make them competitive for faculty positions. The NextProf Pathfinder program has now expanded to include the
University of California, San Diego and the
Georgia Institute of Technology. == Awards ==