Jon Riley
Vice President of Digital Manufacturing at the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS)

As Vice President of Digital Manufacturing for the NCMS, Riley is responsible for identifying partnerships and alliance opportunities to help U.S. manufacturers remain competitive in the global market, thereby improving the economy and creating new jobs. To accomplish this a key element of his strategy is to make advanced development tools such as high performance computing technologies used for evaluating and simulating product designs during the development stage, available to manufacturers of all sizes.

This past year, Riley played an instrumental role in the formation of a Strategic Interest Group for Digital Manufacturing and launched their PIC strategy, while maintaining a leadership role in the Alliance for High Performance Digital Manufacturing. Today, his evangelism appears in strategic talks by multiple business and industry leaders, and his organization's reach into the manufacturing community is unparalleled.

Riley has extensive experience in the areas of R&D, high performance computing, business development, design methodologies and strategies along with a clear vision and strong understanding of the benefits that high performance computing will bring to manufacturing in the coming years. He brings more than 20 years of experience in the areas of virtual and physical product development, design and validation.

Prior to his position at the NCMS, he spent 13 years at L&L Products, Inc., a successful Tier I automotive supplier, as an engineering manager responsible for their Composite Body Solutions product line, used for a wide variety of crashworthiness and NVH applications. During this time he led a corporate global initiative to evaluate and implement required resources for the virtual development of these products including people, hardware and software.

Prior to L&L, Riley worked as a dynamics technical specialist in the aerospace industry and in the vehicle safety group at Ford Motor Company. Riley holds a B.S. and M.S. degree in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

A self-proclaimed WWII buff, Riley’s other passions include exploring ancient history, video editing, and playing golf, in addition to devoting time on the court coaching his first grader’s basketball team. Impressively, Riley has also just finished authoring his first book, slated to be published this year.

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