Technical committee member of the year
Award Criteria
The person chosen for NADCA’s Technical Committee Member of the Year award is subject to several sets of criteria. The award, chosen by NADCA’s technical staff and Technical Committee Chairmen, is given based on participation in committees, contribution to committees/task forces, and applicability of efforts to industry.
Patricia Miller
Patricia Miller is the Director of Technical Services for Uddeholm North America, a division of voestalpine High Performance Metals. Her current role is to support the technical needs of salesforce, customer base, and end users in the United States and Canada in the area of tooling materials. This entails using knowledge of best practices across the wide spectrum of applications where our materials are used, the goal being their proper and successful implementation. It also involves the development of training programs using the latest digital tools.
In support of these activities, she is currently involved in a number of industry associations. Since a large focus of the organization is the use of their steel, heat treatment, and surface protection for the die casting industry, Patricia have been a member of the North American Die Casting Association for many years, helping to establish the NADCA 207 specification for Die Materials and Heat Treatment, and supporting the Special Materials, Coatings, and Welding committees as well.
Past job responsibilities have been support of aerospace, oil and gas, and quality related steel development which was possible because of a solid education aided by being a co-op at Armco Steel Research and Plant Floor Operations where many developments learned there are still in industry use today.
Patricia graduated with a B.S. and M.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana, and an MBA with emphasis on Operations Management from the University of Chicago. Having worked with IBM supporting Engineering Platforms in the Chicago area, she was introduced to many engineering and office software developments.
Recent awards have been the 2022 Uddeholm Technician of the Year, and nominated and awarded as one of the Plastics News’ Women Breaking the Mold class of 2024.
Patricia is passionate about the arts and history, and enjoys documentaries. In addition, she likes to travel and when she does, she searches for children’s books of different countries and share them with her children and grandchildren. One of her earliest was introducing the very first book of Harry Potter to her son Joe when he was 6 years old and finding Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station in London (they have upped their marketing since she was last there). My latest book is Tove Jansson’s Moomin, a mystical creature from Moominvalley. She was thrilled when her granddaughter Maeve took the book she gave her to her day care and the class sat mesmerized while it was read to them. And when she can she tries to golf with her husband at Medinah Country Club and looks forward to playing the new Course 3.
