Biography

I am a Professor of Operations and Decision Analysis at the Faculty of Business and Law. I have also been the Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty and Director of the DBA Programme. My main research interest lies in the field of Strategic Operations Management and Decision Analysis. This includes Manufacturing, Reliability Engineering and Maintenance Systems, Multiple Criteria Decision-Analysis and Applications of Artificial Intelligence such as Fuzzy Logic.

Prior to joining the Faculty of Business and Law, I was a Senior Lecturer in the Manufacturing Division of the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Manufacturing Engineering at UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology). I hold a PhD and MSc from Univ. of Birmingham, an MBA from the American University in Cairo, and a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Univ. of Cairo.

I have published 150-refereed papers in professional journals and international conferences proceedings.  I have been active in attracting research-funded projects from EPSRC, ESRC, European Commission and industry. I have also been involved in teaching modules to various industries such as the EDF, HP, Royal Mail, Qatar Gas, SABEC, and University of Manchester, and Glasgow Caledonian, and the NSF funded research centre IMS in the USA.

I have been involved in the design, development, and implementation of Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMSs), Stock Control Spares and Ordering Systems for major companies in the automotive sector such as Land Rover, Rockwell, Peugeot Talbot and Federal Mogul  - Ferodo. I was the Director of Studies of 20 Doctoral students to completion.

Research interests

Learning from Failures and Major Disasters Using Reliability Techniques,  Decision Analysis in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

I have been funded as PI by ESRC/ CREST (Centre of Research and Evidence of Security Threats) in decision analysis. I have also been funded by an EU project CoBra as PI, which is about optimisation of a robotic arm for prostate cancer procedure and optimisation of its location in the UK. I have also received funding for an  EU  project (ARCSAR) as CoPI working on Search & Rescue (SAR) in the Arctic North Pole with colleagues from Mathematics and Sports Science. I have also received funding from EPSRC as PI working on reliability engineering and maintenance systems as well assessing major failures.  I have written a book on Learning from Major Failures and co-authored a book on Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems.