Smart materials are a class of advanced materials whose properties can be significantly controlled by external stimuli, such as stress, temperature, electric voltage, or magnetic field. The multi-functional nature of smart materials has been investigated in automotive and aerospace applications targeting vibration energy harvesting, vibration absorption or isolation, and wireless sensing. This talk will first present several design concepts that employ selected smart materials including magnetorheological elastomers, piezoelectric materials, and magnetostrictive materials. Due to the brittleness or high price of certain smart materials, another aspect of the research effort is the incorporation of smart materials with mechanically-robust and low-cost conventional structural materials. This talk will then present an advanced joining technique, or ultrasonic additive manufacturing (UAM), which enables dissimilar material welds without inducing harmful heat affected zones. The high-integrity, ceramic-metal composites manufactured by UAM can provide anisotropic thermal or electrical conductivity for future electrical drives.