Programme

bio:

Dr. Abdulla Al-Dhaheri is an accomplished Emirati engineer and innovation consultant with a Ph.D. in Industrial Management and Systems Engineering from Montana State University, USA. His academic and professional journey spans civil engineering, project management, and innovation systems, with expertise in TRIZ methodology and idea generation metrics.

He has held roles in solving real case problems in public and private sectors in the UAE using TRIZ problem solving and measuring their innovation performance, such as companies like Al Ain Municipality, Abu Dhabi Airports, GDRFA Dubai, and others. He has led numerous workshops to enhance creativity, process improvement, and strategic thinking within organizations.

Dr. Abdulla has authored and presented research at international conferences, with published work on green supply chains and leadership’s impact on innovation. In addition to these researches, he helped planning and developing many types of experimental designs such as concrete protection against penetation and blast attacks and measured their results numerically using design of experiment.

He is skilled in MATLAB and SPSS, which helped him in planning and analyzing experiments. Moreover, he is also skillful in AutoCAD and Primavera and is fluent in Arabic and English. Passionate about technology, leadership, and organizational growth, he continues to contribute to the UAE’s innovation landscape.

bio:

Prof. Dr. Werner Riedel is the Chief Scientist of the Division for Defense Science and Technology of Fraunhofer EMI. He received degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Technical Universities of Munich (1994) and Compiègne, France (1996). At EMI he specialized in numerical modelling of materials and components under dynamic loads. In 2000 he received the doctoral degree at the University der Bundeswehr in München. Selected projects include the ADAMMO (European Space Agency, material models for orbital debris impact on ISS, principal investigator), VITRUV (European Commission FP-7, urban security, consortium coordinator), as well as numerous projects for the German automotive, nuclear-electric and defense industry. Dr. Riedel was invited as visiting professor to Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2006/09 and serves at Nanyang Technological University Singapore, Protective Technology Research Center since 2017. He was continuously appointed as honorary professor by Furtwangen University in 2012 in Security & Safety Engineering. He has written and contributed to 149 scientific publications, with a current h-index of 21 according to Scopus. Standford University ranked him for 2022 among the 2% best scientist worldwide, regarding impact and citations of publications.

Short biography:

• Chief Scientist Defense of Fraunhofer EMI
• Started in 1996 at EMI as Ph.D. student, defended at UniBW-M; thesis on concrete, developer of RHT concrete model in Autodyn and LS-Dyna
• 25 years at EMI in various positions, working with automotive, construction, nuclear, defence, space R&D partners and industries
• Professor at Furtwangen University, Security and Safety Engineering, since 2012
• visiting Professor at NTU Singapore, Protective Technology Research Centre, since 2017; former visiting Professor at TokyoTech (2006, 2010)
• 149 scientific publications as author or co-author, Scopus citation ("h-") index of 21
• ranked among the 2% best scientists worldwide, according to Standford University (2022 ranking), regarding impact and citations of publications

bio:

Zhong-Xian Li is a Chair Professor of civil engineering at Tianjin University of China and the Dean of Key Laboratory of Coast Civil Structure Safety of the Ministry of Education, China. He was jointly trained by Tianjin University and University of Basilicata in Italy and obtained his PhD in 1990 from Tianjin University. He once visited University of Cambridge in UK for one year in 1995 and served as the President of Tianjin Chengjian University from 2010 to 2022. His current research interests are seismic and blast resistant analysis and design of buildings and bridges, and most recently focused on performance-based blast resistant design of building structures and multi-disaster resilience of large sea-crossing bridges. He developed the world's first Underwater Shaking Table Array System and edited in chief the first Standard for Blast Protection Design of Civil Buildings in China. He has published more than 300 journal papers and has won two National Awards on Science and Technology Advancement of China and one National Award on Technological Invention of China. He is a board member and elected Fellow of the International Association of Protective Structures (IAPS) and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Protective Structures (ICPS).

bio:

François Boussu is a full professor at ENSAIT (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Industries Textiles) University of Lille, where he has been a faculty member since 1998. His teaching activities centre on weaving technology, the modelling of woven structures, and the theory of fundamental and derivative weave diagrams, with a particular emphasis on 3D warp interlock structures.

His research is structured around two main themes. The first focuses on the dynamic behaviour of fibrous materials under impact, with applications ranging from soft body armour to rigid vehicle protection. The second addresses the design, manufacturing and characterisation of multilayer woven fabrics used as reinforcements in composite materials, with a strong emphasis on structural lightweighting for aerospace, automotive, and rail sectors.

He has supervised 24 PhD theses (including 3 ongoing) and 78 Master’s dissertations. His scientific output includes over 90 publications, comprising 62 peer-reviewed journal articles indexed in international databases, 16 chapters in scientific books, and 10 patents (4 international, 2 European, and 4 national). His work has been presented in over 200 conference proceedings, including 16 invited keynote lectures.

He served as scientific co-director of several dedicated international conferences (TEXCOMP, LWAG, 3D Fabrics), and is an active member of the scientific committees of several major international conferences in textile and composite research.