School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Oklahoma State University
Kenawy Structural Engineering Research Laboratory
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About Dr. Maha Kenawy
Dr. Maha Kenawy is an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Oklahoma State University. She specializes in seismic hazard and risk assessment, performance-based earthquake engineering, and nonlinear analysis of structures subjected to extreme events. Prior to joining OSU, Dr. Kenawy worked as a Buildings and Structures consultant at the scientific and engineering firm Exponent where she developed frameworks for assessing the risks to infrastructure systems due to several natural hazards. She also worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Nevada, Reno where she led research efforts on assessing the regional-scale impacts of earthquakes on building structures using physics-based earthquake fault rupture simulations and high-performance computing tools. Dr. Kenawy holds a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Davis, and a M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Construction Engineering from the American University in Cairo, Egypt. She is the recipient of several awards including the ASCE O.H. Ammann Research Award in Structural Engineering, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) Younger Member Award, and the NSF NHERI Summer Institute Grant for early-career researchers in natural hazard risk reduction.
Research Areas
The Kenawy Structural Engineering research laboratory focuses on creating and using multi-fidelity numerical methods and high-performance computing tools to assess the reliability of infrastructure systems and their vulnerability to natural hazards at multiple scales. Our current work includes the following areas:​
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Regional-scale risk assessment of civil structures subjected to rare earthquake events by integrating high-fidelity physics-based simulations with low-fidelity AI models
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Predicting extreme limit states in structures subjected to multiple or repeated hazards
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Creating reliable methods for seismic performance assessment of near-fault structures
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Assessing the nonstationary vulnerability of critical infrastructure due to the effects of climate change
Join Us
I am currently recruiting a PhD student to join the structural engineering group in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Oklahoma State University in Fall 2025. The research project is at the intersection of earthquake engineering, regional-scale structural risk analysis, applied mathematics, and machine learning.
The minimum requirements of the position are:
- A Bachelor degree with focus on structural engineering
- Experience with nonlinear analysis of structures, and use of OpenSees
- Competency in Python
- Experience with probabilistic methods and advanced statistical analysis
The ideal candidate will have:
- A Master's degree in structural or earthquake engineering
- Experience with scientific computing packages in Python
- Experience with Bayesian statistics and machine learning methods
To apply:
(1) submit an application to the OSU Civil and Environmental Engineering doctoral program. Applications must be submitted by May 1, 2025 to the graduate college: https://go.okstate.edu/graduate-academics/programs/doctoral/civil-engineering-phd.html
(2) Fill this form to indicate your interest in joining my group.
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Please note:
- Responses from candidates who did not submit a formal application to the doctoral program of OSU will not be considered.
- I will not consider or respond to applications submitted via email.