The Pacific Northwest has a decades-long history of researching light-metals processing because of the availability of inexpensive hydropower for smelting operations. While the smelters are no longer in operation, WSU continues to perform advanced research in metallurgy and advanced ceramics engineering. The automotive, aerospace, power generation , and electronics industries in Washington and throughout the world rely on experimentation and development in ferrous and non-ferrous alloy processing and advanced ceramics and glasses. WSU lab researchers develop advanced manufacturing and joining techniques for metals and ceramics, including the additive manufacturing (3D printing) of complex structures and the friction-stir welding of dissimilar materials. WSU laboratories perform glass material optimization and specialized single crystal growth. Researchers develop and apply advanced microstructure characterization of through various microscopy techniques, election and x-ray diffraction, spectrometry, and magnetometry, among others. Researchers employ computations from the atomistic level to the continuum scale in connection with the experiments aimed at gaining a mechanistic understanding of processing-structure-properties and relationships for these important materials.