Dr. Rani Elhajjar is a Fulbright scholar and tenured associate professor at the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He graduated from the University of Nebraska Lincoln-Omaha in 1998, followed by his M.S. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000 and his Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004. His experiences include senior positions in composite quality, certification, and build reliability engineering at Boeing and SpaceX.  His research interests include the effects of defects in polymer based composite structures, sustainable composite materials from renewable and fully recyclable systems; full field non-destructive testing methods; fracture mechanics (micro and nano composites); smart composites for stress sensing; dielectric elastomer composites; magnetostrictive composites; coupled mechanics of composites; and composites for infrastructure applications.