Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University, 2021
  • M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University, 2019
  • B.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Connecticut, 2016
Licenses & Certifications
  • Professional Engineer Mechanical, California, #M 42023
  • Certified Fire and Explosion Investigator (CFEI)
Professional Honors
  • The Sibley School Excellence in Graduate Teaching Assistance Award, 2021
  • NSF Honorable Mention, 2018
Professional Affiliations
  • American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
  • National Associations of Fire Investigators — NAFI
Languages
  • Arabic
  • French (France)

Dr. Hashad is a licensed mechanical engineer who helps clients understand and solve complex engineering issues across a wide range of applications in both litigation and advisory matters. His technical consulting and engineering analysis experience includes thermal analysis of consumer electronics and medical devices; hazard analysis for liquefied natural gas (LNG) and gas processing facilities; airflow and gas dispersion modeling; indoor air quality; pollutant fate and transport; integrity and reliability assessment of industrial fluid systems; HVAC performance evaluation; battery thermal runaway assessment; risk and resilience assessment for gas and electric utilities; product safety evaluation; failure analysis; and fire and explosion investigations. Dr. Hashad's work involves determining how and why failures occur, assessing safety risks, and providing technical engineering support to help clients make informed decisions. Dr. Hashad has also provided expert testimony in legal proceedings.

Dr. Hashad's project work spans a broad range of fluid dynamics, air quality, hazard and failure analysis matters. His experience includes modeling wind patterns and airflow in complex terrain, urban environments, and around buildings and other structures. He has analyzed the dispersion, transport, and deposition of gases and aerosols, including particles and droplets, in both outdoor and indoor environments.

Dr. Hashad has performed hazard analyses for LNG facilities, including flammable and toxic gas dispersion modeling, vapor cloud explosion and overpressure assessments, and jet fire consequence analysis resulting from potential accidental releases. He has also conducted fire and explosion investigations involving residential and industrial incidents, including assessments of flammable gas concentrations and gas migration both above and underground.

His indoor air quality work includes evaluating indoor concentrations of volatile organic compounds, including formaldehyde, as well as flammable gases associated with explosion events. Dr. Hashad has also addressed HVAC related matters, including analyses of airflow and thermal behavior around outdoor HVAC units, the effect of demand controlled ventilation on indoor air quality, and airflow management in data center applications.

In addition, Dr. Hashad has evaluated leaks in underground gas and liquid pipelines in toxic tort matters. He has worked on projects involving industrial fluid systems, including issues related to cavitation, erosion, water hammer, sedimentation, and fluid transport behavior. Dr. Hashad also conducts risk and resiliency assessments for gas and electric utilities. This work includes evaluating the exposure of utility assets to wildfire risk, performing thermal analyses of utility equipment and powerline feeders, assessing odor fade, and conducting wind-loading assessments. He performs failure analyses and performance and safety assessments for a wide range of equipment and systems, including turbomachinery, pumps, pipelines, consumer products, medical devices, batteries, blenders, air purifiers, solar shingles, generators, electrolyzer systems, telecommunications equipment, and lawn mowers.

Dr. Hashad's expertise includes computational fluid dynamics (CFD), heat transfer, aerosol science, fluid dynamics, atmospheric science, air quality, fire and explosion science, statistical analysis, and machine learning. Dr. Hashad also leverages tools such as STAR-CCM+, Ansys Fluent, FLACS, AERMOD, and MATLAB among others to conduct numerical and computational analyses across various applications.

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Hashad was a PhD Candidate in the Mechanical and Aerospace Department at Cornell University. There he worked on optimizing urban green designs (vegetation) to mitigate traffic-related air pollution. He used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to assess the pollutant reduction of novel urban green designs by analyzing the physical mechanisms by which the vegetation barriers reduce pollutants and provided guidelines for optimal barrier designs. He created machine learning models trained on CFD data to capture the effects of vegetation on pollutant behavior downwind of the barrier. Dr. Hashad also developed the first dispersion model that parameterizes the Gaussian plume equations to describe the impact of vegetation on near-road pollutant deposition and dispersion. Leveraging his expertise in aerosol science and CFD, Dr. Hashad also studied airborne virus transmission to help understand the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in indoor environments. He helped develop a validated CFD model that captures the intricate behavior of droplets and aerosols in indoor environments such as deposition, evaporation, and interaction with the air flow. Dr. Hashad also has experience evaluating the heat transfer of photovoltaic solar panels and how they affect the local microclimate and utilizing CFD to model the thermal management of batteries for electric vehicles using phase changing material.