Autar Kaw, Ph.D.

Autar Kaw, PH.D. 
Mechanical Engineering, University of South Florida

Autar Kaw is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Jerome Krivanek Distinguished Teacher at the University of South Florida. He earned his Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Clemson University. Renowned for his extensive work in engineering education research, adaptive, blended, and flipped learning, open courseware development, composite materials mechanics, and bascule bridge design, his research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Florida Department of Transportation, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. 

Since 2001, he has continuously served as the lead Principal Investigator (PI) on NSF engineering education grants totaling $3.3 million. These grants have evaluated the impact of flipped, blended, remote, and adaptive learning environments on metacognitive skills, content knowledge acquisition through various representation methods, group work abilities, perceptions of the learning environment, and the ability to activate prior knowledge. Under Professor Kaw's leadership, his team developed, implemented, refined, and assessed online resources for open education resources (OER) in Numerical Methods. Annually, the OERs have garnered over 1 million page views, 1 million views of YouTube lectures, and 60,000 visitors to the "Numerical Methods Guy" blog. He has authored over 135 refereed technical papers, and his opinion editorials have been featured in The Tampa Bay Times, The Tampa Tribune, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He has earned several national teaching awards, including the 2012 U.S. Professor of the Year Award (for doctoral and research universities) from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.