Efraín Carreño-Morelli, Professor of Materials Technology, was born in 1966 in Córdoba (Argentina) and has the swiss, argentinian and italian citizenships. At the age of 15 he entered National University of Córdoba, from which he graduated in 1989 with a MSc in Physics. Then, he moved to the Atomic Centre of Bariloche to pursue a PhD Thesis on the subject "Metallurgical properties of Al-Mg-Si alloys subjected to neutron irradiation and thermomechanical treatments", which he submitted in 1994. In parallel with his studies of physics and materials science, he also followed courses of astronomy, medicine and philosophy. Working with the oil industry, he developed in 1994 a monitoring system for sucker rod pumps (pumpjacks), which was successfully commercialized and used in oil wells in Patagonia. Arriving at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne EPFL in 1995, he was a research assistant in the Physics Department, where he performed investigations on the processing and damping behaviour of metal matrix composites, dislocation dynamics in ordered intermetallic compounds, and anelastic properties of aluminium alloys. In 2000 he joined the Swiss Federal Institute of Materials Testing and Research EMPA in Thun, where he was a project manager in the development of metal matrix composites.

Dr. Carreño-Morelli assumed in 2001 his present position with the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland in Sion. He currently teaches in several courses of materials science and engineering, including powder metallurgy, composite materials and ceramics technology. His research interests are in the fields of powder metallurgy and additive manufacturing. At the Institute of Systems Engineering, he has been responsible for setting-up the technologies of powder injection moulding for metals and ceramics, press and sintering, selective laser melting, metal binder jetting and ink-jet based metal-ceramic 3D printing. He leads the Powder Technology and Advanced Materials Research Group since 2011. He is the author of numerous refereed publications in international journals and conferences and has filled 5 patent applications. He also serves as an external reviewer for several scientific journals. He is on the editorial board of the open access journal Papers in Physics. He is a member of the European Powder Metallurgy Association (EPMA), the Professional Society for Powder Metallurgy (APMI International), the NTN Innovation Booster Additive Manufacturing (NTN IBAM), the SVMT Expert Group Powder Technology and the Argentinian Physics Association. Since 2010 he serves as a member of the Technical Program Committee of the International Powder Metallurgy Congress EuroPM, including the upcoming meeting Euro PM2024 to be held in Malmö (SE). He also serves in the committees of Powdermet/AMMP 2024 (Pittsburg PA, US) and ASTM ICAM2024 (Atlanta GA, US). He has made pioneering contributions in the processing of carbon nanotube - metal matrix composites, the injection moulding of titanium-niobium alloys and the 3D printing of nickel-free stainless steels. Among his major achievements are the powder injection moulding of titanium from titanium hydride, the net-shape processing of shape memory alloys, the additive manufacturing of fully dense hard metals and the invention of a novel variant of the three-dimensional printing technique: Solvent on Granules 3D Printing (SG-3DP).

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