University of Windsor Mechanical, Automotive & Materials Engineering professor Dr. Jill Urbanic has been named a finalist for the 2026 TCT Women in 3D Printing Innovator Award. (MIKE WILKINS/ University of Windsor)
By Lindsay Charlton
“Dare to be different.”
That’s the challenge University of Windsor professor Dr. Jill Urbanic poses to her students: to question established ideas as they develop innovative engineering solutions — something she models in her own work.
“You can’t live with pre-conceived bias,” she said, holding a pipe fitting made using 3D printing. “For instance, in additive manufacturing, you’re adding layers, but there’s no rule that they need to be flat — they can be rotary. There’s no rule that the layers need to be the same thickness — they can be different.
“But when you look at a lot of prints out there, they always start out flat. What we have here is a part that doesn’t follow that and is machined on the inside.”
The pipe fitting Urbanic had in hand was produced using software developed by her company, CAMufacturing Solutions Inc., which simulates and programs additive manufacturing processes.
Her work as a leading researcher in advanced manufacturing and digital fabrication led her to co-found the Windsor-based company, which now serves a wide range of industries, with its software used in more than 40 countries across six continents.
“It’s not enough for me to do this in a research domain; we’ve also got to teach and get the message out,” she said.
Mazak part built on their machine using CAMufacturing software. (Source: Mastercam/ YouTube)
It is this type of out-of-the-box thinking and innovation that earned Urbanic a place among five finalists for the 2026 TCT Women in 3D Printing Innovator Award.
The international award recognizes female inventors, engineers, researchers and advocates shaping the industry, celebrating not only technical excellence but also leadership, creativity and real-world impact.
“I am absolutely thrilled,” Urbanic said of the recognition. “It was unexpected. I didn’t know I had been nominated until I received my letter. My initial thought was, ‘Is this another spam?’”
This year, the public was asked to submit nominees from around the globe, which were then narrowed down to five finalists selected by a panel of judges.
“It’s absolutely delightful,” she added. “We’re leaders. It’s not only recognition for me, but recognition of the work we’re doing at the University of Windsor, a mid-sized school that can and does do good work.”
Urbanic has always been a creative person, and for her, engineering is where creativity and practicality meet.
“I really enjoy the creative process, whether that’s painting, gardening or a design project,” she said. “One thing I always tell people is to focus on the problem — don’t focus on the solution yet. Not until you’ve really defined the problem can you start to develop your goals and approaches.”
This mindset led her to start her company and continues to guide her research.
CAMufacturing part being built on the University of Windsor's UMC-1000 Phillips Additive Hybrid machine (Courtesy Dr. Jill Urbanic)
“The idea is to do research that’s practical, but also different. When people in industry see it, it sparks something, like ‘this is great, but can you do this? Can you do that?’ and it grows from there,” Urbanic said.
“We’ve reached a point where people are making things without fully understanding how they perform from an engineering perspective, and that’s where the research comes in.”
Urbanic says she would like to see more collaboration, bringing others into the process as those ideas continue to grow.
“Once we get things working, we’ve got to get that message out there, and that’s really the role of educators,” she said. “Ideally, we have a multi-institutional network involving not just universities, but other sources of knowledge as well. That way, we can share what we’re learning and look at it from a quality perspective. At the end of the day, it has to have real value.”
That commitment to connecting research with real-world application is a key part of her nomination.
“To me, knowledge propagation is a big part of real-world impact,” Urbanic said. “It’s about the solution, but also about helping people understand it and bringing out the practicality of it.”
The TCT Women in Engineering Innovator Award will be announced at a ceremony in Boston, Mass., on April 14.