Industries face enormous challenges in manufacturing products efficiently and accurately. Poor quality control impedes production since good parts are often rejected while bad parts are accepted, which generates excessive waste and leads to lost revenue. Ahmad Barari, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Automotive, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science, leads a critical research program focused on improving manufacturing accuracy and quality control. Additive manufacturing or 3D printing, as it’s commonly known, is rapidly gaining ground in the design and manufacture of products where precision is paramount. This core research area aims to improve accuracy in the pre-processing, processing and post-processing of 3D printing parts through Precision Additive Manufacturing (PAM). This allows parts to be revised during design, creating a more efficient process. For example, PAM can be used to develop lighter and more energy-efficient vehicle parts, while producing less waste. Dr. Barari’s other major research area examines coordinate metrology and inspection. Typically, a manufactured part contains errors in the physical characteristics preventing the exact desired shape. Co-ordinate metrology is the geometric measurement of complex shapes of parts, and subsequently using the results to improve quality control. This information can also be used to compensate for manufacturing errors for process control. In 2005, Dr. Barari joined Ontario Tech University as a Lecturer. He received an Ontario Tech University Teaching Excellence Award in 2009. In 2010, he became an Assistant Professor. During his tenure he has developed 15 undergraduate courses. Previously, he was appointed a visiting researcher with the National Research Council of Canada’s Integrated Manufacturing Technology Institute in London, and a research engineering and manufacturing advisor at Tehran Scientific and Industrial Services in Tehran, Iran. Inspired by the emerging role of computer-aided design in manufacturing, Dr. Barari earned his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Amirkabir University of Technology in 1995, and in 1997, completed his Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Sharif University of Technology, both in Tehran. He moved to Canada in 2001, and in 2006, he obtained his Doctor of Philosophy from the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario.