2025 AMUG 3D Printing Scholarship: Winners and What It Funds

The Additive Manufacturing User Group announced its 2025 winners as Colleen Murray and Justin Levy. These are not a single prize split two ways. AMUG administers two named scholarships, each funded by a different industry sponsor and each aimed at a different kind of applicant.

The Randy Stevens Scholarship, backed by In'Tech Industries, goes to a high school teacher or university professor who has contributed to additive manufacturing education. The Guy E. Bourdo Scholarship, sponsored by Cimquest, goes to a student who has contributed to 3D printing education. Same program, different pools. A professor and an undergraduate never compete against each other.

Both winners present at the AMUG 2025 conference, held at the Hilton in Chicago from March 30 to April 3. Murray and Levy are scheduled to present their research on April 1. That presentation slot matters as much as the money. AMUG is a user group, so the audience is engineers running machines, not a general academic crowd.

Murray is a lecturer in the aerospace engineering department at the University of Maryland. Her work there includes leading the development of a new major in electromechanical engineering, which is the kind of curriculum work that takes years and rarely produces a headline.

Dr. Norman Wereley, a fellow aerospace engineering professor at Maryland, described her as a strong communicator and mentor and called her a good fit for the Randy Stevens award. The wording of that award is specific: it recognizes academic and industry leaders who promote the field, not just people who publish.

For a machine shop, the educator track is the interesting one. Every student who learns proper orientation, support placement, and tolerance thinking in a classroom arrives on the shop floor already knowing why a part cannot be printed flat. That is cheaper than teaching it after a failed build.

The Randy Stevens award has a history of going to people who bridge classroom and production. Previous winners such as Brent Griffith and Alex Campbell have said the scholarship opened doors to new contacts and opportunities. Networking is the second half of the prize.

Levy is a third-year mechanical engineering student at Ohio State University, working toward a bachelor's degree through the Center for Excellence in Design and Manufacturing. His research focuses on optimization work, and his printing experience goes back to age 13.

He has interned with Castheon, a 3D printing company, and worked on the National Security Innovation Network X-Force project. He also founded a manufacturing club that pushes 3D printing into education, and during the COVID-19 pandemic that club produced more than 3,000 masks for medical staff.

The Bourdo award is sponsored by Cimquest and goes to a student who has made exceptional contributions to 3D printing education. Note the phrasing. It is not a need-based grant or a GPA prize. It rewards someone who has already taught other people to print.

That distinction matters when you read a resume. A student who ran a club, taught safety, and fixed other people's failed prints has already done the unglamorous part of engineering. Interviewers notice it.

A scholarship page is easy to skim and move past. The useful question for an engineer is what these two tracks produce. Murray's side produces graduates who understand the process before they touch a machine. Levy's side produces students who already know that a 0.2 mm nozzle and a 0.6 mm nozzle are different tools for different jobs.

Additive and subtractive work sit next to each other in most real projects. A bracket might be printed in PA or PEEK for a low-run prototype, then cut from 6061-T6 or 17-4PH once the geometry settles and the load path is known. Tolerances tell you which way to go.

Printers hold roughly ±0.1 mm on a good day and often ±0.3 mm on a large part. Machining holds ±0.005 mm without drama. If a mating face, a bearing bore, or a seal groove has to hit a number, print the rough shape and cut the critical features. That hybrid split is where design-for-AM education pays off.

Surface finish follows the same logic. As-printed polymer surfaces sit well above Ra 3.2 μm. Bead blasting, tumbling, or machining brings them down. A student who has measured both with a profilometer will specify the right process the first time instead of the third.

We run both processes, so the choice is not a sales argument for us. It comes down to quantity, geometry, and tolerance. One prototype with internal channels that a cutter cannot reach is a print. Ten thousand identical parts with a ±0.005 mm bore is machining.

Internal lattice, conformal cooling channels, and hollow sections that would need a multi-piece assembly favor printing. Flat plates, shafts, housings, and anything with a critical bore favor CNC. Metal printing also leaves support marks on downward faces, which usually means a finishing pass anyway.

Thermal and mechanical properties matter too. Printed metal parts carry porosity and directional properties unless they go through HIP and heat treat. Wrought 6061, 304, and 4140 are uniform in every direction. Load-bearing parts that see fatigue cycles usually go to wrought stock.

For low-volume runs, vacuum casting and die casting cover the gap between a print and a machined part. A printed pattern can feed a silicone mold for 20 to 50 polyurethane parts, or a die for larger runs. Each step trades tooling cost against unit cost.