Daniel Branagan

Dr. Daniel Branagan is a visionary, entrepreneur, and scientist, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees, in metallurgy. During his professional career in metallurgy, which has spanned more than thirty years, Dr. Branagan has worked in a wide variety of roles including in industry for both small and large companies, in academia in various roles at multiple universities, and at USDOE National Laboratories. Throughout most of his career, Dr. Branagan has worked in metallurgical labs as both a researcher and director and supervised the melting, casting, and processing of metals daily through a wide range of laboratory scale, pilot scale, and industrial scale processing techniques. Dr. Branagan is a technical expert in structure property processing relationships of metals and alloys in a variety of industrial processing methods, many of which were described in this book. Dr. Branagan has been involved in all aspects of technology deployment from developing an R&D center, leading and directing R&D, and then taking new materials technology through all stages of product development from basic discovery, IP filing, R&D scale, pilot scale, and large-scale commercial production. In his career, he has developed new, novel, and paradigm changing metallic alloys for many industries including automotive, rail, steel, pulp and paper, concrete and cement, heavy construction and mining, electrical power, oil and gas, and the rare earth permanent magnet industries. During his professional career, Dr. Branagan has been named as inventor on > 325 U.S. and global patent applications, with ~230 of these currently granted / issued worldwide. Dr. Branagan has demonstrated scientific and technical thought leadership with > 80 formal peer reviewed scientific journals and trade magazines publications resulting in ~1,500 research citations. At professional materials related conferences, Dr. Branagan has presented > 90 technical talks and has organized 5 professional symposiums. As an entrepreneur, Dr. Branagan has transitioned scientific breakthroughs into technology through IP licenses and the formation of multiple high tech material companies in various fields including high energy density permanent magnets for motors and disc drives, wear and impact resistance coatings for heavy construction and mining, additive manufacturing for replacement of tool steels and dies, and advanced high strength steels for lightweighting automobiles. Dr. Branagan has been widely recognized with numerous (~25) honors and awards during his career with notable achievements in scientific discovery, technology development, and technology transfer. Dr. Branagan was declared as a Fellow by Alpha Sigma Mu (the international professional honor society for the field of materials science and engineering) for “having achieved and maintained throughout a distinguished career a seminal international standing in the Materials Science and Engineering profession”. Additional awards that Dr. Branagan has received include winning six R&D 100 Awards, a BES (Basic Energy Science) Materials Science Award from the USDOE, a “Professional Progress in Engineering Award” from Iowa State University, an “Outstanding Young Alumni Award” at Michigan Technological University, an Excellence in Oral Presentation Award from SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) International, the Sydney H. Melbourne Award for “Excellence in the Advancement of Automotive Sheet Steel”, an INL USDOE “Lifetime Achievement Award for Inventorship”, and a Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Award for “Excellence in Technology Transfer”. During his career, Dr. Branagan has been additionally recognized in the Forbes Special Anniversary Big Ideas Issue as “one of the important innovators of our time, one of 15 people who will reinvent the future” and was additionally selected by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the TR100 Award as one of the top 100 "brilliant young innovators" in the world whose work will have "a deep impact on how we live, work, and think in the century to come."