Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of New Hampshire, 2021
Professional Honors
  • STAF (Summer TA Fellowship) - University of New Hampshire 2019
  • DYF (Dissertation Year Fellowship) - University of New Hampshire 2015
  • CEPS (College of Eng. and Physic. Sci. Fellowship) - University of New Hampshire 2015
  • IRPS (Int. Postgrad. Research Scholarship) - University of Queensland 2015
  • MGS (Monash Graduate Scholarship) - Monash University 2015
  • IGSES (Int. Grad. Scholarship) - University of Manitoba 2015
Professional Affiliations
  • Member of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS)
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, 2022-2023
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, 2021-2022

Dr. Eghtesad specializes in computational solid mechanics and mechanics of materials with an emphasis on deformation response and fatigue and failure in metals, alloys and additively manufactured superalloys. Using these specialized skills, Dr. Eghtesad provides assistance to clients in a wide range of industry sectors including medical devices, consumer electronics, automotive, aerospace and heavy industry. He has more than a decade of experience in simulation and review of advanced materials and structures leveraging finite element analysis as well as micromechanical and multiscale tools such as crystal plasticity and associated experimental testing/characterization such as mechanical testing and scanning electron microscopy. He has gained valuable experience in leveraging high performance computing and data science for modeling complex mechanical structures and assemblies, helping clients to assess designs, manage manufacturing challenges, and improve product performance. Dr. Eghtesad's experience in conducting failure analysis using mechanical engineering tools has been leveraged on multiple investigations of complicated failures serving clients with matters ranging from industrial facilities to medical devices.

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Eghtesad served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University and the Materials Science and Engineering department at the Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Eghtesad received his PhD in the Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Hampshire in 2021. During his postdoctoral appointment at Cornell University, Dr. Eghtesad developed an automated data driven model using neural networks within PyTorch that improved the performance of material modeling in metals. During his postdoctoral appointment at the Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Eghtesad improved uncertainties in modeling the flow response of metals and in particular high-entropy alloys (HEA). He also developed a machine learning based crystal plasticity framework for identifications of microstructural features responsible for micromechanical stress/strain localizations. Dr. Eghtesad's doctoral work was conducted in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) where he focused on the structure-property relationships in metals and metallic alloys including advanced high strength steels (AHSS) as well as additively manufactured (AM) Nickel and Cobalt superalloys. He developed a multi-scale crystal plasticity framework within the finite element method for prediction of large plastic deformation in metallic components with arbitrary geometry and loading conditions. The framework takes the advantage of parallel high-performance computing (HPC) with distributed graphics processing units (GPU) parallel capabilities and facilitates efficient multiscale simulations. He applied his work to a wide range of metal forming applications such as cup drawing in Aluminum and bending in Zirconium, Titanium and Uranium.

Prior to his PhD, Dr. Eghtesad served as a design engineer where he utilized and instructed Ansys Workbench for finite element analysis of solids and structures as well as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for modeling fluid-structure interactions (FSI) at large scales. He developed a meshless Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) solver for prediction of high/hyper velocity impact, fracture, fragmentation and failure in metallic, ceramic and functionally graded materials under extreme conditions. Dr. Eghtesad's work has been used in submitting technical reports to National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE) and Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and resulted in 24 peer-reviewed journal publications. Dr. Eghtesad has demonstrated the impact of his work through professional talks at international conferences including the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS).