Dr. Carolyn Conner Seepersad is the Eugene C. Gwaltney, Jr., Chair of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  She joined the School in 2023 as a Woodruff Professor.  Prior to joining Georgia Tech, she served as the J. Mike Walker Professor of Mechanical Engineering and founding director of the Center for Additive Manufacturing and Design Innovation at The University of Texas at Austin.  She earned her BS in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University, BA/MA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and her PhD and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech as a Hertz Fellow and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. 

Professor Seepersad’s research and teaching focus on design for additive manufacturing, simulation-based and data-driven engineering design, and process innovation in additive manufacturing.  She has earned many awards for her work, including the ASME Design Automation Award and the University of Texas Regents’ Award for Outstanding Teaching (the highest teaching award for faculty in The University of Texas System).  She is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and one book. Her publications have earned Best Paper Awards from the ASME Design Automation Conference, the ASME Design Theory and Methodology Conference, the ASME International Conference on Design Education, and the ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition.

In addition to her academic role, Professor Seepersad is the Editor-in-Chief of the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, an elected member of the advisory board for the Design Society, a member of SME's Additive Manufacturing Technical Leadership Committee, and a former chair of the ASME Design Engineering Division Executive Committee.  She co-leads the TechMade initiative for design innovation at Georgia Tech.