Professor Kaan Inal background profile
Professor Kaan Inal obtained his BASc from Middle East Technical University (1996) and his MASc and PhD (2001) from the University of Sherbrooke. After completing his PhD, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow (PDF) on industry- and government-funded collaborative research projects. Professor Inal joined the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada in July 2006. He is currently a tenured associate professor in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at Waterloo and holds a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council/General Motors of Canada Industrial Research Chair in Integrated Computational Mechanics for Mass Efficient Automotive Structures. He also serves as the associate director of the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research (WatCAR) and is the Principal Investigator of the Computational Mechanics Research Group at Waterloo.
Professor Inal is a world renown pioneer in the field of multi-scale modeling with crystal plasticity. He specializes in mechanism-driven micro-scale numerical models with predictive capabilities and bridges them with macro-scale models to evaluate the performance of lab-scale components. This approach has made it possible to replace complicated and time-consuming mechanical characterization tests with virtual tests that have led to faster industrial product development. Professor Inal leads a research group focusing on numerical/constitutive modeling to assist the development of next-generation materials (metallic and non-metallic), as well as to predict their performance. He also leads research on high-performance computing (parallel computing) for “industrial scale” simulations. These models are coupled with computational intelligence methods such as neural networks and genetic algorithms for simulations in the field of solid mechanics.
Professor Inal takes pride in the quality of the students he attracts to the University of Waterloo and the mentorship he provides. He has supervised more than 30 graduate and undergraduate students, and more than 10 post-doctoral fellows and visiting researchers. His graduates and doctoral fellows occupy academic positions at various institutions and prominent industrial roles in large corporations, such as General Electric Research and Development, General Motors Canada, and SNC Lavalin.
Professor Inal has co-authored more than 80 research articles and book chapters. Professor Inal has held visiting professorship at University of Pennsylvania and Georgia Institute of Technology. He was also a visiting scientist with General Motors Canadian Regional Engineering Center (2014) where he participated in various projects on lightweighting. He is a reviewer for several international journals and is currently a guest editor for the International Journal of Plasticity. Finally, professor Inal sits on multiple scientific committees for international conferences and symposiums.