Dr. Joseph Beaman earned his Sc.D., the equivalent of a Ph.D., in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. He joined the faculty of The University of Texas at Austin that same year. Dr. Beaman received the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1984.

Beaman specializes in rapid prototyping and dynamic systems and control. He studies a manufacturing technique called solid freeform fabrication, or desktop manufacturing, which produces freeform solid objects directly from a computer model of the object without part-specific tooling or human intervention. Solid freeform fabrication has the potential to produce accurate, structurally sound three-dimensional renditions of objects designed in a computer and to manufacture the objects in minutes or hours. The new process reduces cost and design time because it can manufacture objects in one operation instead of multiple manufacturing steps.