Merging his two greatest passions: Dr. Medhat Shehata
For Dr. Medhat Shehata, his love for physics inspired him to pursue his career in engineering.
“What I liked about physics is that you can take math and apply it to something that you can visualize,” said Shehata. “And like any civil engineer, I like to build. The fact that you can create a structure with more than one function, like restoring water and producing electricity in the case of dams, has been very attractive to me.”
While Shehata branches out his research to explore different industries, Shehata’s constant fascination for civil engineering comes from his desire to help and create results for society.
“As civil engineers, we're helping the world in our own way,” said Shehata. “Most of my research is practical or applied research where there is an actual issue that I'm trying to solve. I want to make sure that my research can help people, and I want to use my skills to support society.”
Alongside engineering, Shehata says teaching is his greatest passion. As a result, the combination of these two aspects in his roles as professor and associate dean has created the perfect medley for Shehata. As he reflects on the past school year, the associate dean says one of his proudest accomplishments is how his team and colleagues adapted their teaching to an online environment.
“The pandemic came all of the sudden, and we had to switch to meet the online environment promptly,” said Shehata. “I worked with my colleagues and faculty members to offer all of our courses virtually, and I would say with a good level of success.”
By working to identify and break down systemic barriers, not only for university students but also high school students, Shehata and his EDI team are striving to improve equity, diversity, and inclusion in engineering. The associate dean says he hopes to spread the message that ‘engineering is for everyone.’
“We are paving the road for students to secure a good career in the future through outreach,” said Shehata. “We want to start by speaking to equity seeking groups at a young age and try to remove any barriers that may create a perception that engineering might not be for them.”
With the academic year approaching and the opportunities for in-person learning, Shehata says he is most excited to make use of the lessons he learned throughout the pandemic.
“What I look forward to is learning from the positives and the negatives of virtual learning. We want to take the positives and make use of it in our future teachings, while avoiding the negatives,” said Shehata. “I look forward to seeing how we can blend what we learned from the pandemic and what we have traditionally done for the last decades.”