Dr. Alaa K. Ashmawy is the President of Deraya University in Egypt. He was formerly Professor of Civil Engineering and Dean of the School of Engineering at the American University in Dubai (AUD).  He moved to the Dubai in 2006 from the University of South Florida in Tampa (Florida, USA), where he had been a tenured Associate Professor.  He earned his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University in West Lafayette (Indiana, USA), and his Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering with Distinction from Alexandria University (Egypt).  He also held interim appointments with the geosystems group at Georgia Tech in Atlanta (USA) as a research fellow, the National Research Centre in Cairo (Egypt) as a visiting researcher, and at the Universidád de las Americas in Puebla (Mexico) as a visiting professor.

Ashmawy was a member of GEDC since 2007, and served on its executive committee and on several task forces in different capacities.  He is a member of ASEE, ASCE, IEEE, and Sigma Xi, and is past Chair of the UAE Engineering Deans Council.  He also serves as a Program Evaluator for ABET’s Engineering Accreditation Commission and SACS Commission on Colleges.

He is the recipient of numerous research, teaching, and service awards at the institutional and national levels, including the IEEE Education Society EDUCON Meritorious Award, the Jerome Krivanek Distinguished Teacher Award (USF), and the President’s Institutional Effectiveness Award (AUD).  Ashmawy’s technical expertise is in geotechnical engineering, with interests in environmental geotechnics and micromechanics of granular media.

He authored and co-authored two book chapters and more than 100 papers in his field.  His research has been funded by the US National Science Foundation, the US Department of State, and the Florida Department of Transportation.  He consults regularly on a broad range of projects in the USA and the UAE, and is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in Florida, USA.