Dr. Rafi Muhanna

Biography

Rafi L. Muhanna is an Associate Professor at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He obtained his B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Damascus in 1972 and both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Solid Structural Mechanics from the Higher Institute of Structure Architecture, Sofia, Bulgaria in 1976 and 1979, respectively. Dr. Muhanna joined the faculty of the University of Damascus in Syria in 1980 and has served on the faculty at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Maryland from 1991 to 2000. He has won several international prizes, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1992 for his innovative masonry shell system with steel reinforcement and the Golden Prize from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for a displayed patent at the International Fair in Damascus in 1988. In 1989, he received the Special Prize from United Nations HABITAT. Dr. Muhanna's research focuses on solid structural mechanics, particularly in uncertainty modeling, structural reliability, computational reliability, shell theory, and optimization in masonry building materials and structural systems. His work led to the development of new methods in reliable engineering computing and the establishment of the Center for Reliable Engineering Computing (REC), which hosts bi-annual international workshops sponsored by NSF on Reliable Engineering Computing since 2004.

Research Interests