In summer 2026, Dr. Xu delivered three invited talks covering topics in resilient digital manufacturing systems and architected material design:

• JMD Future of Design Panel, in ASME IDETC/CIE 2026, Aug, 2026
• GE Aerospace Research, Jul, 2026
• Ford Motor Company – Research and Advanced Engineering, June, 2026

In addition, Dr. Xu’s group also presented two papers in ASME IDETC/CIE 2026:

• DETC2026-191528 Physics-distilled Neural Network with Large Language Models for Process-Property Mapping in Manufacturing Processes
• DETC2026-194385 Explainable Feature-Steered Diffusion for Nature-Inspired Periodic Metamaterial Design From Stochastic Microstructures