The Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) has announced a second keynote presentation for the 2026 AMUG conference, drawing on the benefits of cross industry collaboration.
Steve Fournier, leader of the additive designs and manufacturing centre of excellence at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, and Scott Sawyer, director of programs at automotive company Divergent, will share their story of cross-industry collaboration and success.
Titled ‘From hypercars to defence drones: how two major industry innovators started their partnership journey at AMUG,’ their keynote will discuss how an automotive and a defence company found transferable additive manufacturing value.
“Separately, General Atomics and Divergent have been well-recognised for their impressive outcomes when applying additive manufacturing. I am very excited to hear how they have elevated the value of the technology through their partnership,” said AMUG’s director of education and conference, Alex Roschli.
Steve Fournier has over 23 years of experience in Silicon Valley R&D. Frome product and business development, engineering project management, and manufacturing to DoE national laboratory projects, and DoD aerospace and aviation unmanned aerial systems.
Scott Sawyer serves as director of programs at Divergent, overseeing a portfolio of over 25 programs in both the commercial and defence sectors. Sawyer engages with government and industry customers to bring the divergent adaptive production system to platform designs, enabling modular, affordable, scalable structural solutions.
They will share details on how AMUG initiated their connection, leading to business and product transformations by learning from one another and identifying applicable AM technology that transfers across vastly different product lines.
The AMUG 2026 conference will feature other keynote presentations from the likes of Ronen Hadar of The LEGO Group and features an Innovators Showcase of user applications.
The keynotes and featured presentations will kickstart each day of the conference and set the tone for nearly 150 presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and hands-on training sessions.
The AMUG conference will be held in Reno, Nevada, from March 15-19, this year.
