Members

​Fahad Al-Khodairi is a Corporate Fellow at SABIC global research and application development centers since 2016, leading polymers R&D activities in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. At SABIC, he has worked as General Manager of Oil-to-Chemicals Technology (2013 – 2016), General Manager of Polymers SBU Technology Management (2009 – 2013), General Manager of R&D Polymers Research (2001 – 2009), PVC Technology Manager (1999 – 2001) and P&M Laboratories Manager (1997 – 1999). He has a strong experience and vast knowledge in petrochemical and chemical industry including strategy, research, acquisition, contracts and licensing management; managing research portfolio, setting tools and processes; value proposition and creation along with entire value chain needs. He chaired member of several affiliated boards and ex-member of GPCA. He is co-inventor of several patents, author and co-author of technical papers in reputable journals and a book chapter (The fatigue of hybrid composites) in Fatigue in Composites (Ed. Bryan Harris, CRC Press, 2003). He obtained MSc and PhD in Material Science from Brunel University London, UK (Fatigue of Unidirectional and Hybrid Composites).

Dr Enrique Garcia has been the Chief Technical Officer at the National Composites Centre in Bristol, a centre of excellence in composites technology development since Spring 2015.

He has extensive experience in R&D and product development in diverse industries – renewable energy, aerospace, automotive, railways, holding senior manager positions in all of these sectors.

He has focused on polymer-based products working from the nanoscale to the largest composite structures using a wide variety of manufacturing technologies with a special emphasis in design for manufacturing. He has developed successful strategies to lead innovation teams while adding value by guaranteeing schedules and quality and minimizing costs.

Enrique’s passion is to tackle big challenges and to share his vision with others by innovating, creating and developing. Enrique is particularly interested in working closely with academia, government and industry to develop capability and technology at the NCC that bridges the so-called “Valley of Death”, transforming bright ideas into successful composite products.

He has an Executive MBA from one of the top-five worldwide business schools, engineering degrees (BEng, MSc and PhD), speaks fluent English, Italian, and Spanish, and can hold a conversation in French.

Dr. Yudhanto is Research Scientist mainly working on mechanical properties and damage mechanism of composite materials. He is involved in various projects: continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic laminates for structural application (impact, in-situ characterization, micro/mesomechanics), electrical characterization and damage in 3D textile and pre-preg based composites, thermoplastic-based nanocomposites, interface tailoring of composite adhesively-bonded joints and actuator design for soft robots.

Gilles Lubineau is Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Associate Dean for PSE Faculty at KAUST.

He is principal investigator for Composites Lab (Mechanics of Composites for Energy and Mobility) previously known as COHMAS (COmposite and Heterogeneous Materials Analysis and Simulation, an integrated environment for composite engineering that he created in 2009 when joining KAUST).

Following his “aggregation” in theoretical mechanics, Pr. Lubineau earned a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from École Normale Supérieure de Cachan (ENS-Cachan), France. Before joining KAUST, Pr. Lubineau was a faculty member at the École Normale Supérieure of Cachan, and a non-resident faculty member at the École Polytechnique, France. He also served as a visiting researcher at UC-Berkeley.

His fields of research include: integrity at short and/or long-term of composite materials and structures, inverse problems for the identifica­tion of constitutive parameters, multi-scale coupling technique, nano and/or multifunctional materials. He covers a wide expertise related to most fields of composite materials, with over 200 published papers in journal spanning from material science (Advanced Materials, Macro­molecules, etc..) all the way to theoretical mechanics (JMPS, CST, Scien­tific Reports) and applied maths (IJNME, CMAME, etc.).

He is also board member for various journals, including the Internation­al Journal of Damage Mechanics.

Prof. Lubineau is an elected Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts

TBC

Prof. Jinsong Leng is Cheung Kong Chair Professor and Director of the Center for Smart Materials and Structures at Harbin Institute of Technology (China). His researches cover Stimulus Responsive Polymers (Shape Memory and Electro-Active Polymers) and their composites, 4D printing, Sensors and Actuators, Structural Health Monitoring, Multifunctional Nanocomposites, etc. Prof. Leng has served as the Vice President of International Committee on Composite Materials (ICCM), Vice President of Chinese Society for Composite Materials (CSCM). He has also been elected as Foreign Member of Academia Europaea, Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, World Fellow of ICCM, Fellow of AAAS, Fellow of the SPIE, Fellow of IOP, Fellow of RAeS, Fellow of IMMM, and Associate Fellow of AIAA.

Professor John Botsis obtained his diplôme in civil engineering at the University of Patras, Greece in 1979.  He continued his education at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland Ohio/USA, where he received his MS and Ph.D. 1984. After two years at the research center for national defense in Athens, he was nominated assistant professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, associate in 1991, and full professor in 1995. In 1996, he was nominated professor of solids and structural mechanics at the EPFL. His activities cover experimental mechanics, fracture, and fatigue of advanced materials including composites and biomaterials using novel experimental techniques, numerical methods, and micromechanics. He has co-authored more than 150 journal papers, several book chapters, and two textbooks. His research has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, State Secretariat for Education and Research, Swiss commission for technology and innovation, EU and Swiss industry.

Dr. Khaled Almuhammadi is a key member of the Non-Metallics Development Program in Saudi Aramco. Khaled holds PhD and Master degrees in Mechanical Engineering from KAUST. His research focuses on carbon fiber materials, nano-composites, and structural health monitoring of composite materials related to various industries. Khaled joined Saudi Aramco in 2006, and worked as a project engineer in Shaybah Expansion Project. Further, he worked as an inspection engineer in Yanbu Refinery. Khaled also worked as a technology engineer in the Inspection Department. Currently, Khaled is spearheading the Non-Metallics Project Management Office (PMO) that oversees the execution of  the Non-Metallics Corporate Initiative

Khalid Alblehed received the BEng and MEng from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2006 and Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia in 2010, respectively.

Also, he gained a PhD in metrology system design from University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK in 2016. He currently works in King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology as an Assistant Professor in the National Center for Aeronautical Technology.

His research interests are in the fields of high precision metrology, sensor and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems for composite aeronautic structures.

Majed A. Alrefae is an Assistant Professor at Yanbu Industrial College, Royal Commission Yanbu Colleges and Institutes. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2018, MS from KAUST in 2013, and BS from KFUPM in 2008. He worked as a project engineer at SABIC from 2008 to 2010. At Purdue University, Majed optimized and characterized a custom-built scalable roll-to-roll plasma CVD system to deposit carbon nanostructures on various flexible substrates, including Cu foil and carbon fiber. Majed won the KAUST Seed Fund in 2012 and was the most improved Entrepreneurial Lead in the I-Corps Program in 2017 for commercializing carbon nanostructures. His research focus is on developing plasma processes to produce carbon nanostructures for energy and water desalination applications.