Faculty Profile
Hunain Said Alkhateb
Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering
Phone Number:
Email: hsalkhat@olemiss.edu
Key Words: Engineering, Civil, Mars, NASA, Additive construction, Additive Manufacturing, 3D printing
Research Description: Dr. Hunain Alkhateb is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Mississippi and a member of the Nano Infrastructure Research Group (NIRG). She received her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Mississippi in 2011 and joined the UM’s Department of Civil Engineering in August 2012. Dr.Alkhateb’s research is focused on multiscale characterization and in situ additive construction. She has developed a strong relationship with NASA-Marshall (ACME team) and has been selected for two constitutive years as the only Ole Miss NASA faculty fellowship (2016 and 2017). The main goal of her current research established with NASA is to synthesize binding composites and develop detailed structure-property relationships in an effort to address some of the top challenges of Human Health, Life Support, and Habitation Systems. Dr. Alkhateb is currently advising 3 Ph.D. students who are working on optimizing cementitious binders for in-situ construction and will be advising 2 more in Fall 2018; has advised over 15 undergraduate research-students through several NASA funded projects and other funding opportunities, and she graduated 4 M.S. and 1 Ph.D. students. Dr.Alkhateb has authored/coauthored over 25 journal publications in prestigious journals; over 35 conference presentations and poster sessions. She was invited as Big Idea Presenter at the NSF Workshop on Additive Manufacturing for Civil Infrastructure Design and Construction-NSF 2017, served as a panelist in the ACI Spring convention 2017, Resilient Extraterrestrial Habitats (RETH) workshop, RETH Speaker a reviewer for several NSF proposal panels and she is a reviewer for multiple technical journals.
Honors Theses:
Odle, Davis P. (2019) The NOLA Development: Stormwater Management and Green Alternative Designs (full text)
Available Research Projects:
Developing a Novel Method to Bond Planetary Regolith to Form Rigid Structures for Space Based Habitats
Project Description: In this project, our major objective is to optimize the process of forming structural Martian regolith-bricks, suitable for autonomous construction technologies, which will be utilized to build the necessary infrastructure for the deep space extended exploration mission. The novelty of the proposed approach is utilizing ILs to partially digest in situ Martian regolith particles, allowing the regolith particles to cement together and form predetermined construction suitable shapes (tiles, or blocks, …etc). Microwave and CO2 exposure will be the primary proposed chemical mechanisms to cure the resulted bricks, utilizing the environmental resources and possible available energy sources. The pre-shaped bricks could be further optimized and assembled to construct and evaluate structural elements or systems.
Desired Student Qualifications: Engineering or Chemistry Background, Sophmore or Junior level.
Project Timeline: 2019-2021
Duties of Student Researcher: Assist in the sample preparations Assist in recording measurements Attending Research group meetings Compiling experimental data Performing basic simulations Developing webpages
Last Updated on 2019-02-20 13:48:49