Dr. Thoma is the Director of the Grainger Institute for Engineering (GIE) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) and a Professor in Materials Science and Engineering. The GIE initial thrust areas were Advanced Manufacturing and Accelerated Materials Discovery and has expanded to many other societal impact areas. Prior to UW, he was the Deputy Division Leader for the Materials Science and Technology (MST) Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). This division focused on manufacturing and novel materials research. His technical efforts have been devoted to new manufacturing methods and materials by design, with a particular focus on property response as a function of microstructural evolution during phase transformations. Dr. Thoma has been active within materials professional societies, where he was the president of The Minerals, Metals, Materials Society (TMS) in 2003, the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) in 2008, and the Federation of Materials Societies (FMS) in 2009-2010. His expertise in materials and manufacturing was recognized in 2008 by being elected as a Fellow of ASM International. In 2019, he was elected Fellow of TMS.