Essam Shehab

Background

Professor Essam Shehab attained his PhD Degree in manufacturing engineering from De Montfort University Leicester, which was carried out in collaboration with Ericsson Mobile Telecommunications Ltd, and was successfully completed within three-year duration of the project. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering with first class and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Cairo, Egypt. He was awarded the Academic Excellence Award for his achievements in both degrees. Prior to joining academia, Professor Shehab has worked in industry for a number of years.

Current activities

Professor Shehab is currently the Founding Head of Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Nazarbayev University. He is also a Professor of Digital Manufacturing and leads a research group at Cranfield University. He has sustained his strong research leadership with Airbus and Rolls-Royce by collaborating consistently with both companies over the past 12 years and has generated an impressive 92 research projects with both companies. The strategic research projects with Airbus and Rolls-Royce span from very innovative research (TRL 1) to technology demonstration (TRL 6).

Professor Shehab produced 244 research publications in refereed journals and conferences papers which have received over 6000 Citations. i10-index of 58 and h-index of 19, 27 and 22 by Scopus, Google Scholar and Research Gate respectively. He has successfully completed the supervision of 26 PhD theses and 5 MSc by Research theses, 132 MSc theses, 25 MSc group projects and 3 PgCert dissertations. Thirty of Professor Shehab’s 70 EngD/PhD and MSc students who have been sponsored by Rolls-Royce have been employed by the company before or immediately after completing their projects. Ten of Professor Shehab’s MSc students have won Best Thesis, Royal Academy of Engineering Panasonic Trust Fellowship, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce Manufacturing Excellence awards.

Professor Shehab has secured 110 research projects (£11.32m in total of which £4.52m as Principal Investigator) from Government grants (UK, EU and overseas) and industry. As principal investigator, his research projects include a €11.7m EU-FP7 project, £2m Innovate UK, 5 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) EngD/PhD research projects with Rolls-Royce, 86 MSc projects with industry, one of five core projects funded by the EPSRC Centre in Through-Life Engineering Services (TES) project, a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project, and seven PhD projects with overseas governments. Professor Shehab is the co-investigator of £10.5m EPSRC Centre in TES, €7.5m EU-FP7, 6 Cranfield EPSRC Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre (IMRC) projects and 5 EPSRC studentships.

Research Interests:

Digital Manufacturing

 Aerospace Design and Manufacturing

Cost Modelling and Knowledge Engineering for Innovative Product Development 

System Design

Enterprise Resource Planning for Manufacturing

Clients

Rolls-Royce and Airbus are main sponsors of Professor Shehab’s research where he has developed and sustained long-term collaborative research relationships with them. BAE Systems, MoD, Lockheed Martin and Lotus Cars are also his industrial collaborators.