Dr. Houssam Toutanji
Dr. Houssam Toutanji is Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Civil and Construction Engineering at Western Michigan University (WMU). Prior to joining WMU, he was at the University of Alabama – Huntsville, where he served as the chair of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and as Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education, and was the Associate Director of the University Transportation Center for Alabama (1999 – 2001 and 2008 – 2012). He graduated from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, with BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering, and received a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Dr. Toutanji's research interests include: advanced fiber reinforced polymer composites, Lunar concrete construction, water extraction from regolith soil, fiber-reinforced cementitious composites, high strength concrete, nondestructive testing, smart materials and smart structures, and bridge design. He is the author/co-author of over 75 refereed archival papers in scientific journals, author and contributor to monographs, author of over 110 papers in conference proceedings, in addition to other papers, chapters in books and technical reports. He is the holder of 1 patent. He has served as principal or co-principal investigator on research projects funded by NSF, DOD, NOAA, NASA, the Army Corps of Engineers, ALDOT, and UTCA.
Dr. Toutanji is a visiting professor at the University of Gent, Department of Structural Engineering (Gent-Belgium). He is also a Research Visiting Scholar at Cergy-Pontoise University's Civil Engineering Department. Dr. Toutanji is a recipient of the National Science Foundation's CAREER award. He also received the NSF-EPSCoR Scholarly Productivity Award two years in a row, for research performance, intrinsic merit of research work, and for potential in research. Dr. Toutanji was selected by the National Science Foundation to be part of 14 U.S. delegations participating in international conferences and workshops on FRP composites for repair and bridge design. He served as the Associate Director of the University Transportation Center for Alabama (UTCA) for six years. Dr. Toutanji served as an Associate Editor of a number of journals. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and an ABET evaluator for the same society.
