Bio:
Professor Abdel-Khalik has obtained his Bachelor in Nuclear Engineering from Alexandria University in Egypt in 2000. Immediately after graduation he joined the department of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University to pursue his graduate studies. His master and PhD dissertation have produced a number of new algorithms serving as a toolkit to handle the voluminous data streams generated from nuclear plants simulation. His objective was to provide a solid mathematical basis to improve predictions of boiling water core simulators. After graduation he worked as a Nuclear Engineer in the methods group at AREVA-NP in Lynchburg, VA. During his tenure at AREVA, he worked on fuel loading pattern optimization for pressurized water reactors. He returned to North Carolina State in 2007 as a tenure-track assistant professor, and obtained his tenure in 2013. He developed a research program on uncertainty quantification and reduced order modeling during his tenure at North Carolina State. Since his arrival at Purdue in August 2014, he has expanded his research program to design data-driven algorithms to support the validation and safety of nuclear power plants. One aspect of safety that has achieved a great deal of attention in recent years is cybersecurity, for which no clear solution currently exists, especially with the increased level of sophistication that hackers have achieved. He is currently developing a program on employing physics-driven data mining techniques to detect cyberattacks which attempt to manipulate the state of critical infrastructure systems such as nuclear power plants.