Dr. Juan L. Trasorras is receiving the Distinguished Service to Powder Metallurgy Award at the 2023 MPIF PowderMet conference. Dr. Trasorras has over 25 years of experience in research and development. Before joining GTP he held the positions of Global Director of R&D with Plansee Mitsubishi Materials Global Sintered Products Group, VP and Chief Technical Officer with Sinterstahl, and Director of Valvetrain & Transmission R&D with the Federal-Mogul Corporation. He has organized and managed research & development groups in the USA, England, France, and Japan.
Dr. Trasorras has an impressive education history including five degrees from the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology: Bachelor of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering, and Master of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering. Dr. Trasorras has also received his doctorate in Materials Science & Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, where he received the honor of “University Scholar”.
Dr. Trasorras’s areas of expertise include hydrometallurgy, powder metallurgy (PM), surface fatigue, and the development of intellectual property portfolios. He led the development of many PM technologies and automotive products, including surface densification of steel alloys, automatic transmission one-way clutches, manual transmission synchronizers, assembled camshafts with sintered cam lobes, and sinter-hardened ratchet one-way clutches. Recently, Dr. Trasorras has focused on the development of tungsten carbide powders for additive manufacturing using the binder jetting 3D printing process. In 2017, his R&D team produced the first fully dense cemented carbide using an additive manufacturing process.
Dr. Trasorras holds 9 patents and 1 patent application. He has published over 40 scientific papers and many book chapters, including chapters in Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry and the ASM Handbook volumes on Powder Metallurgy and Additive Manufacturing.
Dr. Trasorras has received numerous awards, among them, the “SAE Excellence in Oral Presentation Award” which he has earned twice, in 2000 and 2006, and the “Federal-Mogul President’s Innovation Award” in 2006. Now in 2023, he is presented with the Distinguished Service to Powder Metallurgy Award. This award “recognizes individuals who have devoted a major part of their working careers to one or more segments of the field of powder metallurgy and whose long-term contributions and achievements are such that, in the minds of their peers, they deserve this special recognition for outstanding and distinguished service.”
Dr. Trasorras has found enjoyment in his career and is always excited to see new technologies come to life. He says, “It is most rewarding to develop a meaningful technology and to see it materialize in real-world applications.”
Throughout his career, Dr. Trasorras has also valued his collaboration with colleagues. He says, “I have been very lucky, over the years I have worked with very talented scientists and engineers. You need very talented people to move technology forward.”
