Contact Professor Essam Shehab

Areas of expertise

  • Aerospace Manufacturing
  • Manufacturing Systems

Background

Professor Essam Shehab attained his PhD Degree in manufacturing engineering from De Montfort University Leicester, which was carried out in collaboration with Ericsson Mobile Telecommunications Ltd, and was successfully completed within three-year duration of the project. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering with first class and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Cairo, Egypt. He was awarded the Academic Excellence Award for his achievements in both degrees. Prior to joining academia, Professor Shehab has worked in industry for a number of years.
Professor Shehab has been invited as keynote speaker in a number of international conferences, won awards from a number of international conferences and journals. He served as an Associate Editor-In-Chief of Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) - Part B Journal of Engineering Manufacture. He is also an Editorial Board Member, a Guest Editor of special issues and a reviewer of a number international journals. He has acted as the General and Programme Chair of 8 international conferences.
Professor Shehab is a Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the Association of Cost Engineers (ACostE), and a member of the Egyptian Engineers Syndicate. He was a member of the ACostE council and the Chair (2014 - 2018) of ACostE company members advisory board.
Professor Shehab is serving as an External Examiner over a 4-year period for Queens University Belfast (2012 - 2016), Teesside University (2014-2019) and University of Leicester (2018 - 2022) for MEng/BEng Mechanical and Manufacturing programmes. He acted as external examiner for over 30 PhD theses. He was elected as Vice-Chair (2015-2017) of Kimberley 16-19 STEM College Advisory Board and a Director (2017- 2019) of the Holywell Middle School Board of Governors, Cranfield, Bedford.

Current activities

Professor Shehab is currently a Visiting Professor of Digital Manufacturing at Cranfield University and the Head of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. He as sustained his strong research leadership with world-leading aerospace companies including Airbus and Rolls-Royce by collaborating consistently with both companies over the past 16 years and has generated an impressive over 100 research projects with both companies. The strategic research projects with Airbus and Rolls-Royce span from very innovative research (TRL1) to technology demonstration (TRL 6).

Professor Shehab Generated 292 research publications including 76 refereed journal papers which have received over 11,800 Citations. His i10-index of 80 and h-index of 27, 35 and 30 by Scopus, Google Scholar and Research Gate respectively. He has successfully completed the supervision of 29 PhD theses and 5 MSc by Research theses, 106 MSc theses, 23 MSc group projects and 3 PgCert dissertations. Thirty of Professor Shehab’s 87 EngD/PhD and MSc students who have been sponsored by Rolls-Royce have been employed by the company before or immediately after completing their projects. Ten of Professor Shehab’s MSc students have won Best Thesis, Royal Academy of Engineering Panasonic Trust Fellowship, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce Manufacturing Excellence awards.

Professor Shehab has secured 110 research projects (£15.91m in total of which £5.6m as Principal Investigator) from Government grants (UK, EU and overseas) and industry. As principal investigator, his research projects include a €11.7m EU-FP7 project, £2m Innovate UK, 5 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) EngD/PhD research projects with Rolls-Royce, 86 MSc projects with industry, one of five core projects funded by the EPSRC Centre in Through-Life Engineering Services (TES) project, a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project, and seven PhD projects with overseas governments. Professor Shehab is the co-investigator of £10.5m EPSRC Centre in TES, €7.5m EU-FP7, 6 Cranfield EPSRC Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre (IMRC) projects and 5 EPSRC studentships.

Research Interests:

Digital Manufacturing

Aerospace Design and Manufacturing

Cost Modelling and Knowledge Engineering for Innovative Product Development 

System Design

Enterprise Resource Planning for Manufacturing

Clients

Rolls-Royce and Airbus are main sponsors of Professor Shehab’s research where he has developed and sustained long-term collaborative research relationships with them. BAE Systems, MoD, Lockheed Martin and Lotus Cars are also among his industrial collaborators. 
Industrial Clients:
  • Airbus 
  • Rolls-Royce
  • Air Astana
  • STELIA Aerospace, France
  • Lufthansa 
  • Lockheed Martin UK 
  • BAE Systems
  • Philips, Netherlands  
  • Lotus Cars 
  • IBM
  • Network Rail
  • UniPart 
  • Visteon Engineering Services 
  • Volkswagen Germany 
  • Sitech Poland
  • Cosworth
  • Abbey Corrugated. 
Funding bodies: 
  • EPSRC 
  • EU – FP7
  • Innovate UK

Publications

Articles In Journals

Conference Papers

Books