Featured Faculty

Dr. Samad’s scholarly work focuses primarily on Hybrid Mechanics and Composite Materials. More specifically, his research in this field is situated in three subcategories: i) structural analysis of sandwich composite materials, ii) hybridizing thermographic experimental data and iii) numerical modeling of paper-based honeycomb constructions. The research Dr. Samad’s group is most recently working on is in collaboration with the Institut Pascal in France, where the objective is to couple analytical stress functions with experimental thermoelastic data for a better understanding of the underlying state of stress in different granular stacking scenarios. Preliminary results of this work are scheduled to be presented at the Society of Experimental Mechanics’ annual meeting in Reno, NV in June 2019.

Aside from his research group’s primary track, Dr. Samad has taken on the topic of smart cities in effort to align some of his scholarly work with RIT-Dubai’s vision and newly established City Science graduate program. Dr. Samad’s work in this area culminated in co-organizing a 3-day workshop on the subject with the Gulf Research Center Cambridge held at the University of Cambridge, UK. The workshop, titled “Smart Cities in the Gulf: Current State, Opportunities, and Challenges”, which attracted academics and practitioners from various disciplines, investigated the challenges, opportunities and frameworks in the implementation of smart cities in the gulf region. A book comprising extended versions of papers presented at the workshop is now out and available by Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Dr. Samad has more than thirty publications including journal articles, conference proceedings, technical reports and an edited volume. He is currently the vice-chair of the Thermomechanics and Infra-Red Imaging technical division of the Society of Experimental Mechanics.

Wael Samad, PHD
Assistant Professor
Mechanical Engineering
RIT Dubai