Manish Mehta, Ph.D.

Director of Strategic Projects & Sustainability
National Center for Manufacturing Sciences

Dr. Manish Mehta is Director of Strategic Projects and Sustainability at the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS), the nation’s largest cross-industry R&D consortium based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His responsibilities include identifying new manufacturing technology needs, conducting emerging technology and business assessments, and managing collaborative projects and public-private ventures in lightweight materials, net shape manufacturing, nanomanufacturing, sustainability, and alternative energy. Previously, he was Manager of Consortium Programs at Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (1991-2000), and Principal Technical Fellow at Altarum Institute. Manish obtained his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Bangalore University (India), M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial Engineering from the University of Cincinnati.  He completed the University of Michigan Ross Business School’s Executive Program in 2001, specializing in technology management and corporate strategy. He has a twenty-year history of organizing and managing collaborative OEM-supplier-academia-national lab projects in lightweight materials for the US Council for Automotive Research and the US Automotive Materials Partnership (USAMP).

Manish has over 60 publications, including invited talks, authorship of three successive survey-based studies charting nanotechnology commercialization trends in the US (2003, 2006, 2009 – a fourth study is in progress), and a chapter in the Nanomanufacturing Handbook (Taylor & Francis, 2006). He was a two-term member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Manufacturing and Engineering Design (2002-2007) as well as a member of two successive National Research Council studies on best practices in lightweighting for military platforms (2003 and 2012) which have formed the basis for recent National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) solicitations. He was Peer Review Director of Michigan’s 21st Century Jobs Fund 2008 Business Plan Competition and the Ohio Third Frontier Fund Reviews, advisor to SPRING Singapore and the New York-based Converging Technologies Bar Association, and India Cultural Ambassador at Ann Arbor SPARK.  He is a member of the ASM International Emerging Technology Awareness Committee, a Fellow of the Engineering Society of Detroit (ESD) and is also active in the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (Nanotech & Journals Committees), TiE-Detroit and Society of Automotive Engineers (Non-Ferrous Committee). Manish is a Past-President of the Rotary Club of Ann Arbor North, and also the Midwest Regional Vice-President of the Jain Associations in North America, a non-profit humanitarian organization with special consultative status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. He has led several global collaborative projects sponsored by the Rotary International Foundation on clean water and sanitation as enablers for empowering women and people at the bottom of the pyramid.