Rate My Professor Albert To

Albert C. To is the William Kepler Whiteford Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering. He joined the university in 2008 as an assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor in 2014, and to full professor in 2019. To earned his BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1997, an MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999, an MS in Earth and Planetary Science from UC Berkeley in 2005, and a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2005. He conducted postdoctoral research with Wing Kam Liu at Northwestern University from 2005 to 2008.

To's primary research interests are in design optimization for additive manufacturing, computational solid mechanics, multiscale modeling and simulation of advanced materials and structures, with current focus on fast process modeling and topology optimization for metal additive manufacturing. He directs the ANSYS Additive Manufacturing Research Laboratory and the MOST-AM Consortium, which he founded in 2016 and which now includes over 30 member companies and research labs. His publication record exceeds 150 peer-reviewed articles, including seminal works such as "Proportional topology optimization: A new non-sensitivity method for solving stress constrained and minimum compliance problems and its implementation in MATLAB" in PLOS ONE (2015), "Efficient design optimization of variable-density cellular structures for additive manufacturing: Theory and experimental validation" in Rapid Prototyping Journal (2017), "Quantitative texture prediction of epitaxial columnar grains in additive manufacturing using selective laser melting" in Additive Manufacturing (2017), and recent advancements like "STEAM: A scalable data-driven surrogate modeling framework for part-scale scanwise thermal process simulation of laser powder bed fusion" in Additive Manufacturing (2026). With over 11,757 citations on Google Scholar, his contributions have profoundly influenced computational mechanics and additive manufacturing fields. To has received prestigious awards including the NSF BRIGE Award in 2009, the Board of Visitors Faculty Award from the Swanson School of Engineering in 2016, and the Carnegie Science Award in the Advanced Manufacturing and Materials category in 2018.