Student Spotlight: Foad Karimian

Name

Foad Karimian

Year in Program

4th year

Advisor

Professor Modarres

Research Interests

Fatigue damage analysis, Non-destructive testing, Data analysis, Machine Learning, Acoustic Emission, Digital Image Correlation

Dissertation Topic

Thermodynamic and information entropy-based prediction and detection of fatigue failures in metallic and composite materials using acoustic emission and digital image correlation

What drew you to engineering?

I think what drew me to engineering was my curiosity about how things work. As a child, I used to disassemble my toys just to see what is inside and why they did what they did and then trying to reassemble them again. In school, I was interested in math and physics. I think it was the combination of those, in addition to growing up in a family of engineers, that drew me to Mechanical Engineering.

What made you decide to come to UMD and the ENRE Program?

I first learned about the ENRE program when I was participating in an ASNT conference. It was at the time when I was finishing my Master's degree and was looking for a Ph.D. program to join. One of the speakers was Dr. Modarres's previous student. I enjoyed her presentation and talked to her about it afterward. She introduced the ENRE program to me. Then I contacted Dr. Modarres and joined the program.

What do you want people to know about Reliability Engineering that they may not know?

I think people need to know that Reliability Engineering is a very broad major. As we see in our ENRE program, faculty members have very broad and different backgrounds. Reliability Engineering provides tools that apply in many industries, and it is essential especially for leading companies in an industry.

What is a fun fact about yourself?

I am fascinated with the idea that how would someone live his/her life if they were born in a different country. And because of that, I love traveling. I love to travel to new places and experience them myself. I had the chance of backpacking in India for a month and live in rural areas. Then I backpacked in Europe and to lower my costs, I taught in orphanages and worked with sick children in hospitals in Warsaw, Poland. Since I moved to U.S., I tried to travel within the country every chance I got, and I have seen more than 22 states so far.

Published February 28, 2021