Faculty Profiles

Karim H. Muci-Kuchler, Ph.D. is a Professor of Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Academic Program Coordinator at the Ingram School of Engineering at Texas State University. He is also Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT), where he served from August 2002 until his retirement in December 2021. At the time of his retirement, he held the roles of Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Experimental and Computational Mechanics Laboratory. Prior to his tenure at SDSMT, Dr. Muci-Kuchler was an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Detroit Mercy from January 1999 to August 2002. From January 1993 to December 1998, he served on the faculty of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), Monterrey Campus, where he advanced from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor. Throughout his academic career, Dr. Muci-Kuchler has taught a broad range of undergraduate and graduate engineering courses. His primary research interests include Engineering Education, Computational Mechanics, Solid Mechanics, Impulsive Loading Events, and Digital Twins.

Dr. Muci-Kuchler earned his Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Iowa State University in 1992. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical-Electrical Engineering (1985) and an M.E. in Mechanical Engineering (1988) from the Monterrey Campus of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM). As a graduate student he was invited to join the following honor societies: Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi, and Phi Kappa Phi. Dr. Muci-Kuchler is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, co-author of a book about Adaptive Meshing with Boundary Elements, and author or co-author of over 100 publications. The latter include papers related to engineering education, the boundary element method, the friction stir spot welding process, and surrogate perforating projectile wounds, among others. He is an ABET program evaluator (PEV), has been associate editor of an ASME journal, has served as co-topic organizer and as session chair or co-chair at international conferences, has reviewed papers for technical journals and conference proceedings, has served as panelist for the National Science Foundation (NSF), and has done consulting for industry in Mexico and the US. He is currently the principal investigator (PI) of an NSF S-STEM grant and of a STEM education project funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) that involves three academic institutions.