Dan J. Thoma

In 2015, he became the inaugural director of the Grainger Institute for Engineering at UW-Madison's College of Engineering. The institute had been initially given a funding of $25 million by the Grainger Foundation in Illinois in 2014. The Grainger Institute for Engineering is currently part of the College of Engineering at UW-Madison.

Thoma has received a number of honors and awards, including the 2010 Distinguished Achievement Award from the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and 2019 TMS Fellow Award.

From 1992 to 2015, Thoma worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he most recently served as the Deputy Division Leader at the Materials Science and Technology Division.

Thoma attended the University of Cincinnati for his undergraduate studies, and obtained a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering in 1986. During his undergraduate studies, Thoma was a co-op student at the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1992, he graduated with a Ph.D. in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Dan J. Thoma (born January 30, 1963) is an American metallurgist who is a Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the director of the Grainger Institute for Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Thoma is also a past President of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME). Thoma is well-known for his research on 3D printing technology, which he has carried out for over two decades.