Dr. Frank’s research focuses on creating new methods for rapid prototyping and more importantly, rapid manufacturing. The term rapid manufacturing implies that we wish to create functional parts, rather than just models. The primary goal of this work is to eliminate the pre-process engineering time and skill required to create a custom component. Therefore, the term rapid means fast and easy process planning, fixture planning and setup planning for making one, or a few functional parts. The goal of the Rapid Manufacturing and Prototyping Laboratory (RMPL) is to investigate rapid approaches for existing manufacturing methods and to explore new processes and equipment for development. This work has been applied to the machining of industrial components, rapid pattern tooling for metal castings, and most recently, the rapid manufacturing of custom bone implants. Dr. Frank also conducts research in the area of wind energy manufacturing, as part of the Wind Energy Manufacturing Laboratory (WEML). The research is focused on developing better and more automated methods for the manufacturing of Mega-Watt class wind turbine systems. He has received the ISU E-Week Outstanding Professor award for 2005, the 2006 SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, and currently holds one US Patent.