Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU) has appointed Dr. Fadi Antoun Karaa, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the director and founder of the Critical Infrastructure Systems multi-disciplinary graduate program, as the new dean of its Faculty of Business Administration and Economics (FBAE), effective August 30, 2017.
Dr. Karaa’s expertise and research focus is in enterprise management systems, critical infrastructure systems lifecycle and security management systems, utility infrastructure integrated models and strategies, and large-scale project management and construction management systems.
Sponsored by the University Transportation Research Center (UTRC), the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection(NJDEP), the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL), the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), he has led a wide range of research and development projects and developed several management systems on decision support and expert systems for capital improvement planning, large-scale program planning and scheduling systems, integrated risk, and resilience modeling for combined cost-effective multi-hazard flood protection and mitigation strategies, and underground infrastructure asset management, performance and condition assessment, predictive modeling, and risk assessment.
Under the sponsorship of federal and state agencies in the U.S., he undertook the multi-criteria evaluation and lifecycle analysis of two of the largest pipeline projects in the Greater Boston Area and developed decision support systems for capital improvement planning and maintenance management of key underground infrastructure network projects for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and water and wastewater agencies and municipalities. He managed the requirements analysis, design and development of a permitting management system integrated with the master planning system for the Central Artery project, developed a database of a worldwide Army Installation inventory of water supply chain facilities and a compliance management system for water treatment planning and budgeting. He also developed a hierarchical asset connectivity model and management system for Intelligent Transportation systems fiber-optic communication networks. He led a post-Sandy large multi-disciplinary team in the development of multi-tiered structural and non-structural flood protection strategies for the Hackensack/Meadowlands area.
Dr. Karaa stated “I bring the mix of skills, good will and attitude to this new opening to make it possible to work with the NDU upper Administration, fellow Deans, Chairs and the Faculty, to build a new vision for FBAE, identifying untapped potential where it can be found based on the School’s core competencies, building bridges across Schools and Faculties and creating new winning Programs in advancement of the School’s strategic directions.”
His current research includes the design and development of sustainable resilient large-scale infrastructure systems integrating lifecycle and security management systems with a focus on coastal and flood-prone areas, regional and urban infrastructure, and dam systems.
Dr. Karaa has developed and taught graduate and undergraduate courses at NJIT, Northeastern University, MIT, and Tufts University, covering performance, security, and risk analysis of infrastructure systems, construction management, and project evaluation, financing, and controls. He has authored and co-authored papers in key Journals, such as ASCE Journals of Pipeline Systems, Water Resources Planning and Management, Professional Issues in Engineering, Management in Engineering, Performance of Constructed Facilities, Construction Engineering and Management, the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computation, and other project management and professional journals.
His past experiences in industrial management and systems consulting include serving as Vice-President for Oracle Corporation, where he led the Northeast Consulting group and a national data warehousing practice for the Industrial Sector, designing and implementing enterprise solutions for Fortune 100 companies across a number of sectors. He led the development of a strategic sourcing enterprise management and decision support system. He undertook several capacity building assignments for large corporations and international agencies. He was the keynote speaker for major events, such as the 2007 “Construction Roundtable of NJ” and the 2000 “2nd Annual Electronic Commerce Conference.”
He earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (Water Resource Systems), M.S. in Management (Finance and MIS), and M.S. in Civil Engineering Systems all from MIT; he was awarded an Engineer Diploma from Ecole Polytechnique, Paris. He was awarded the ‘Excellence in Teaching Awards’ at the College of Engineering and the overall university levels. He was also the recipient of MIT’s ‘Arthur T. Ippen Award,’ and the Boston Society of Civil Engineers ‘President’s Appreciation Award.’
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Fadi Karaa to NDU.