Dr. Nikhil Verghese

Nikhil is a Corporate Fellow in SABIC’s Corporate Technology and Innovation organization. He splits his time between SABIC’s Corporate/Petchem SBU and Specialties SBU and is largely responsible for their strategic Polymer related activities which includes incubating new platforms, assessing key industrial partnerships and potential acquisitions, establishing critical external university relationships, new product development and finally, championing talent management. His contributions include, but not restricted to, the development of a new platform on Advanced Composites (includes launching the new UDMAXTM continuous fiber tape product). He spent 3 years (2015-2018) in The Netherlands where he was responsible for setting up SABIC’s Advanced Composites Center of Excellence in Geleen as well as partnerships with FRT to produce Tapes and with Airborne in The Hague for developing a first of its kind, fully automated Composite Laminate production line for high speed production. In late 2020, he accepted the additional role of Adjunct Professor at Rice University’s department of Material Science and NanoEngineering (with Prof. Ajayan). Nikhil completed his Ph.D. at Virginia Tech in Material Science and Engineering in 1999, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship, at Virginia Tech under the guidance of Prof. J. J. Lesko in Engineering Science and Mechanics. Prior to joining SABIC in 2012, Nikhil’s industrial career spanned 12 years at The Dow Chemical Company (Dow) where he held various positions within Research and Development. During his tenure at Dow, he was responsible for creating and launching FORTEGRATM, a new family of rubber toughening technologies for epoxy and epoxy vinylester based thermoset resins. In 2009, as Global Technology Leader, he initiated a new platform in Thermoset Composites that in 2011 resulted in the launch of VORAFORCETM, a family of Epoxy and Polyurethane formulated systems, designed to address the fabrication needs of technologies such as Ultra-Fast RTM (resin transfer molding), Filament Winding, Pultrusion and SRIM (structural reaction injection molding). Nikhil’s publications include chapters in 4 books and over 124 peer reviewed journal papers and conference proceedings. He holds 46 filed and granted patents. Nikhil served as Chairman of the ‘Failure Analysis and Prevention Special Interest Group’ at SPE-ANTEC in 2002 and co-chaired the ‘Bonding, Joining and Finishing of Composites’ division of SPE-ACCE in 2008. In 2009, he was elected to the board for SPE’s Composites Division and was its Technical Program Chair at ANTEC in 2012 & `13. In 2014, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the PTIC (Polymer Consortium) at Texas A&M and in 2020, he was elected to the Industrial Advisory Board of the Macromolecules Innovation Institute (MII) at Virginia Tech. He has been an invited speaker at various venues including Deformation, Yield and Fracture of Polymers (DYFP) Netherlands, SAMPE India, Rolduc Polymer Conference, APS, ACS, ACMA & SASCOM.

Title of Presentation:
Thermoplastic Composite Solutions for Mass Markets: Opportunities and Challenges

Dr. Jalal El Yagoubi

Dr. Jalal El Yagoubi graduated from École Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique et d’Aérotechnique in 2007 with an M.S. in solid mechanics and engineering. He earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Bordeaux 1 in 2011. From 2011 to 2013, he was a post-doctoral researcher at KAUST (COHMAS Lab). Since 2014, he is Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Institute of Mechanics and Engineering (I2M, Bordeaux). His work focuses on the behavior of composite materials designed for industrial applications involving multiphysics couplings. His activities are at the interface of several engineering fields aiming at understanding the complexity of the degradation phenomena of composites. He is laureate of Georges Besse’s foundation, which recognizes and supports high potential engineering student.

Title of Presentation:
Experimental Investigation of Composite Pressure Vessels for Industrial Applications

Mr. Abdulaziz Asiri

Abdulaziz Asiri holds a MSc Degree in Polymer Engineering from the University of Akron in Ohio on 2003 where his research thesis was focused on utilizing carbon fiber in sandwiched carbon composite panels for enhancing the impact resistance. Mr. Asiri has 25 years of industrial experience in Saudi Aramco where 19 years of them specialized on nonmetallic materials. During his work Mr. Asiri introduced new nonmetallic technologies to Saudi Aramco such as fire-retardant composite pipes in aboveground firewater application, composite pipe in aboveground hydrocarbon service, large diameter HDPE pipe replacing concrete flume, and composite lined carbon steel production tubing in downhole application. He developed internal materials specification standards, conducted failure analysis and materials selection of nonmetallic materials in particular composite pipes, elastomer lining, subea flexible pipes, thermoplastic piping. Mr. Asiri is the Chairman of the Nonmetallic Standards Committee in Saudi Aramco since 2018.

Title of Presentation:
Composite Piping in Oil and Gas Industry

Prof. Gilles Lubineau

Prof. Gilles Lubineau is Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Associate Dean of the Faculty, PSE Division at KAUST. He is the Director for COHMAS (Composite and Heterogeneous Materials Analysis and Simulation, an integrated environment for composite engineering that he created in 2009 when joining KAUST). Current research interests include: integrity at short and/or long-term of composite materials and structures, inverse problems for the identification of constitutive parameters, multi-scale coupling technique, multifunctional materials and modeling, nano and multifunctional materials and devices. He collaborates with many industries from a variety of sectors including the Energy sector, the Transportation sector or the Consumer electronics sector. Before joining KAUST, Prof. Lubineau was a faculty member at the École Normale Supérieure of Cachan, and a non-resident faculty member at the École Polytechnique, France. He also served as a visiting researcher at UC-Berkeley. Following his "aggregation" in theoretical mechanics, Prof. Lubineau earned a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering and an HDR from École Normale Supérieure de Cachan (ENS-Cachan). He has authored over 200 journal and conference papers. His work covers a very wide expertise from Material Science to Composite Engineering and Computational Mechanics as testified by the diversity of his publications in journals such as Advanced materials, Journal of the Mechanics of Physics of Solids, Scientific Reports, Composite Structures, Composites Part A, Macromolecules, Langmuir, Small, Nanoscale, etc. He received the Daniel Valentin award recognizing his accomplishments in the science of composite materials. He is also board members for various journals, including the International Journal of Damage Mechanics. Prof. Lubineau is an elected Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Title of Presentation:
Improving Toughness in Composites by Design

Bert Rietman

Title of Presentation:
Manufacturing Solutions for Thermoplastic Composite Applications