Draft:Tod A. Laursen

Dr. Tod A. Laursen is an American academic and engineer currently serving as Chancellor of American University of Sharjah. Prior to his current role, he served in various capacities as a faculty member, researcher as well as in leadership positions of various institutions including Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, and State University of New York (SUNY) Polytechnic Institute in New York. During his time in State University of New York (SUNY) systems, he also served as the Chief Academic Officer (Provost).

Education
Dr. Laursen has a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University (1986), a Master of Science (MS) in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (1989) and he earned his Ph.D. also in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (1992).

Career
Dr. Laursen started his career in 1992 as a faculty member at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. While at Duke University he held various positions including professor of mechanical, civil, biomedical and environmental engineering; Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (1998-2000), Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of Civil and Environmental Studies (2001-2003); Senior Associate Dean for Education in the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering (2003 - 2008), and Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (2008 – 2010).

In 2008 he moved to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates to begin a new role as a President of Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research. He served in this capacity until 2018.

He returned to the United States where from 2018-2020 he served as a Provost and Senior Vice-Chancellor of State University of New York (SUNY), and later as Acting President of SUNY Polytechnic Institute (2021-2022).

Following a short tenure as a Vice Chancellor at Wigwe University in the Republic of Nigeria in 2023, Dr. Laursen returned to the United Arab Emirates, in October of the same year, where he currently serves as a Chancellor of American University of Sharjah.

Research
In his research pursuits, Dr. Laursen’s area of specialization is in computational mechanics. This is a subfield of mechanical engineering which is focused on the development of computational algorithms and tools to analyse mechanical and structural systems. His most published research work is in the areas of finite element method and non-linear systems.

Publication
Dr. Laursen has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and abstracts. He is also a published author of Computational Contact and Impact Mechanics: Fundamentals of Modeling Interfacial Phenomena in Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis; and he has co-authored another book titled Computational Contact Mechanics: CISM Courses and Lectures.

Awards
Over the course of his career, Dr. Laursen has received numerous honors and awards including the Earl I. Brown II Outstanding Civil Engineering Faculty Award he received in 1997, the Oregon State University Council of Outstanding Early Career Engineers Award he received in 1998, as well as the Oregon State University Academy of Distinguished Engineers Award he received in 2010.