Physical Sciences and Engineering Division
Faculty
The PSE Division includes the following members of the KAUST faculty:
Dr. Tala'at Al-Kassab - Associate Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
Dr. Al-Kassab’s research focuses on experimental and theoretical investigations to reveal the link between the physical properties, such as hardness or magnetic behavior of a material, and the arrangements of its constitutional different species at the atomic scale. (Ph.D., University of Göttingen, Germany)
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Dr. Tariq A. Alkhalifa - Professor, Geophysics
Dr. Alkhalifa’s research interests are in imaging and velocity model building for exploring seismic data with special emphasis on media that exhibit anisotropic behavior of wave propagation. (Ph.D., Colorado School of Mines, United States)
Web site: https://sites.google.com/a/kaust.edu.sa/tariq/
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Dr. Mohamed-Slim Alouini - Professor, Electrical Engineering
Dr. Alouini’s research interests are in the modeling, design, and performance analysis of wireless communication systems. (Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, United States)
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Dr. Husam N. Alshareef - Associate Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
Dr. Alshareef’s research interests are in functional oxides for electronics, nanoelectronics, and energy--harvesting applications. (Ph.D., North Carolina State University, United States)
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Dr. Aram Amassian - Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
Dr. Amassian's research interests are in the area of molecular materials for electronic and solar energy applications. (Ph.D., Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada)
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Dr. Hakan Bağcı - Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering
Dr. Bağcı’s research focuses on various aspects of applied and theoretical computational electromagnetics. (Ph.D., University of Illinois, United States)
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Dr. Osman Bakr - Assistant Professor, Materials Science
Dr. Bakr’s research interests are concerned with the physics and chemistry of nanomaterials. (Ph D., Harvard University, United States)
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Dr. Fabrizio Bisetti - Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Bisetti’s research interests are in computational fluid mechanics applied to multi-physics, multi-scale complex flows including turbulent reactive flows, turbulent aerosols and flame synthesis of nanomaterials. (Ph.D., University of California - Berkeley, United States)
Web site: www.reactiveflowmodelinglaboratory.net
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Dr. Victor Manuel Calo - Assistant Professor, Earth and Environmental Sciences and Engineering; Assistant Professor, Applied Mathematics and Computational Science
Dr. Calo’s research interests include the computational aspects of geometrical modeling, fluid dynamics, solid mechanics, phase separation, fluid-structure interaction, geomechanics, and high-performance computing. (Ph.D., Stanford University, United States)
Web site: http://www.ices.utexas.edu/~victor
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Dr. Sahraoui Chaieb - Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Chaieb’s research interests are in biomembranes biophysics with application in cell mechanics and drug delivery, nanomaterials for biological and renewable energy applications and nanotechnology. (Ph.D., Ècole Normale Supèrieure, France)
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Dr. Suk Ho Chung - Director, Clean Combustion Research Center; Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Chung’s research interest is in fundamental combustion focused on energy, environment, and fuel issues, related to high-efficiency low-emission combustion systems of internal combustion engine, gas turbines, and boilers and burners. (Ph.D., Northwestern University, United States)
Web site: http://ccrc.kaust.edu.sa
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Dr. Tamer El Sayed - Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Dr. El Sayed's research interests are in the constitutive modeling of soft materials applied to traumatic brain injuries and reinforcement of structures. He is also interested in crystal plasticity, uncertainty quantification, and large scale computing. Dr. El Sayed is the principal investigator of the Computational Solid Mechanics Laboratory (CSML) at KAUST with the primary goal of formulating verified and validated massive parallel computational campaigns to advance predictive science. (Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, United States)
Web site: http://www.kaust.edu.sa/tamerelsayed
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Dr. Ian Foulds - Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering
Dr. Foulds researches microfabricated cell arraying devices for use in automated study of cell metabolic processes. (Ph.D., Simon Fraser University, Canada)
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Dr. Ibrahim Hoteit - Assistant Professor, Earth and Environmental Sciences and Engineering
Dr. Hoteit’s research interests are in the theoretical developments of advanced data assimilation methods for the estimation of the state of large dimensional nonlinear systems. He is also involved in the development of oceanic and atmospheric data assimilation systems. (Ph.D., Université Joseph Fourier, France)
Web site: http://www.kaust.edu.sa/ibrahimhoteit
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Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Hussain - Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering
Dr. Hussain’s research vision is to integrate advanced nanomaterials with nanofabrication into ultra low or no power electronics and nano-systems to build integrated nanotechnology for energy, environment, and medical applications. (Ph.D., University of Texas in Austin, United States)
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Dr. Sigurjón Jónsson - Associate Professor, Geophysics
Dr. Jónsson’s research focuses on the use of satellite geodesy, primarily satellite radar interferometry (InSAR) and GPS, to study areas threatened by major earthquakes or volcanic activity. He uses these crustal deformation measurements, along with modeling, to retrieve information about subsurface geophysical processes such as earthquake fault slip, post seismic relaxation, and magma accumulation. (Ph.D., Stanford University, United States)
Web site: http://www.seg2.ethz.ch/jonssons/
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Dr. Jurgen Kosel - Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering
Dr. Kosel’s research interests are in sensors for biological and technical applications, microsystems, biomedical engineering, magnetism, and materials science. (Ph.D., Vienna University of Technology, Austria)
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Dr. Gilles Lubineau - Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Lubineau’s research interests include virtual testing, identification, modeling, and simulation strategies for composites, especially for predicting severe mechanisms of degradation in CRFP. (Ph.D./Habitation, École Normale Supérieure de Cachan (ENS-Cachan), France)
Web site: www.cohmas.org
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Dr. Martin Mai - Associate Professor, Geophysics
Dr. Mai’s research interests include the physics of earthquakes and the resulting complexity of earthquake phenomena, as seen, for instance, through earthquake-source imaging, dynamic rupture modeling, and numerical simulation of the long-term evolution of faults and related earthquake characteristics. His works extends all the way to ground-motion simulation for seismic-hazard and earthquake-engineering applications. (Ph.D., Stanford University, United States)
Web site: http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/staff/martin/
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Dr. Aurelien Manchon - Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
Dr. Manchon’s research addresses the issue of spin transport in magnetic and non-magnetic hybrid structures, as well as its interaction with magnetization dynamics. (Ph.D., Université Joseph Fourier, France)
Web site: http://www.kaust.edu.sa/aurelienmanchon
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Dr. Boon S. Ooi - Professor, Electrical Engineering
Dr. Ooi’s research interests are in the theoretical and experimental study of semiconductor nanostructures and monolithic integration of photonic devices for fiber-optic communication, sensor, and biomedical imaging applications. (Ph.D., University of Glasgow, Scotland)
Web site: http://www.ece.lehigh.edu/~bsooi
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Dr. Iman S. Roqan - Assistant Professor, Materials Science
Dr. Roqan studies optical, magnetic, and structural properties of semiconductors, with an aim to investigate the optical excitation mechanisms, improve the quality of the grown films and their luminescence and ferromagnetic properties. She is also interested in improving the performance of optoelectronics devices andoptical spectroscopy for other materials, such as biomaterials. (Ph.D., University of Strathclyde, Scotland)
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Dr. Khaled Nabil Salama - Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering
Dr. Salama’s research interests cover a variety of interdisciplinary aspects of electronic circuit design and semiconductor fabrication. (Ph.D., Stanford University, United States)
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Dr. Gerard Thomas Schuster - Professor, Geophysics
Dr. Schuster’s research interests are in seismic imaging applications in engineering, earthquake hazard mitigation, and exploration geophysics. He is the coordinator of the KAUST seismic field laboratory that consists of more than 600 channels of recording geophone stations linked by a state-of-the-art digital network. He is actively pursuing the theoretical and practical development of seismic interferometry. (Ph.D., Columbia University, United States)
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Dr. Udo Schwingenschlögl - Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
Dr. Schwingenschlögl’s research interests concentrate on the electronic and structural properties of nanostructured systems, in particular those including surfaces and interfaces. (Ph.D., Universitat Augsburg, Germany)
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Dr. Georgiy Stenchikov - Professor, Environmental Science; Professor, Applied Mathematics and Computational Science
Dr. Stenchikov’s research interests are in multi-scale modeling of environmental processes and numerical methods; global climate change, climate downscaling, atmospheric convection; assessment of anthropogenic impacts and geoengineering, air-sea interaction, evaluating environmental consequences of catastrophic events like volcanic eruptions, nuclear explosions, forest and urban fires; and air pollution, transport of aerosols, chemically and optically active atmospheric tracers, their radiative forcing and effect on climate. (Ph.D., Moscow Physical Technical Institute, Russia)
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Dr. Shuyu Sun - Assistant Professor, Physical Sciences and Engineering and Applied Mathematics and Computational Science
Dr. Sun’s research interests are in computational methods for a variety of engineering and scientific applications. His research includes the modeling and simulation of single-phase flow, multi-phase flow and reactive transport in porous media, as well as the numerical analysis of relevant algorithms. (Ph.D., University of Texas in Austin, United States)
Web site: http://www.kaust.edu.sa/shuyusun
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Dr. Sigurdur Thorodssen - Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Thorodssen’s research interests are in experimental fluid mechanics, focusing on the use of ultra-high-speed video imaging to study the dynamics of free-surface flows. (Ph.D., University of California - San Diego, United States)
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Staff
Mr. Steve Bee, Administrative Manager
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Ms. Mirna Haydar, Administrative Assistant
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Ms. Karen McElwee, Graduate Program Coordinator
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Ms. Foteini Pratsoli, Secretary
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