Ala Qattawi was the first woman in the country to earn a Ph.D. in automotive engineering. Where is she now?

Clemson University alumna Ala Qattawi has an impressive resume that includes making history as the nation’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in automotive engineering and a host of awards that mark her as an outstanding researcher, educator, and mentor.

But that tells only part of the story.

For the rest, it helps to go back to when Qattawi first decided to pursue a career as a faculty member in academia. Well-meaning colleagues told her not to say anything about her children to prospective employers because they would be discouraged from hiring her, but Qattawi decided not to listen.

“I am most proud of having a family and at the same time aspiring to have a career,” she said. “It may be hard to do both, but this should be the normal way. I occasionally bring my children to campus with me. No one can just postpone their life.”

Qattawi is living proof that it is possible for a mother to have both a family and a thriving career in a field traditionally dominated by males.

She and her husband now have three boys, ages 12, 10 and 5. At the same time, Qattawi is helping shape the next generation of engineers as an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Toledo.

Mohammad Elahinia, interim dean of the College of Engineering and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Toledo, called Qattawi successful, innovative and collaborative.

“She is very serious about any aspect of her work, and as a result, her work has been of very high caliber and quality,” he said. “She has also been very successful at collaborating with many colleagues, including me.”

Laine Mears, chair of Clemson’s Department of Automotive Engineering, said that Qattawi has taken what she studied at Clemson and leveraged it into a growing career that has branched far beyond her Ph.D. studies. The department honored her last year with its Distinguished Alumni Award.

“It’s not only her scientific knowledge, but she is highly involved in the professional community,” Mears said. “She has come up as a rising star in ASME and SME leadership.”

Qattawi’s journey started at Clemson in 2008, when she arrived on the main campus, at first to pursue a master’s in mechanical engineering. She was attracted by the weather, cost of living, the University’s rankings and the international community.

Qattawi remembers joining a group of students and faculty members on a tour of the BMW plant in Greer, and what she saw changed the trajectory of her career.

“I said, ‘That’s it– that’s what I want to do,’” she recalled. “I felt a passion for manufacturing and the way the assembly line is. I was seeing the car moving, piece by piece, and at the end it was a full car. I really felt this was the place I wanted to be.”

Qattawi said that when she began as an automotive engineering Ph.D. student in 2009, she was the only woman in the program. She was a trailblazer in a trailblazing department. Clemson was the first university in the nation to offer a graduate program in automotive engineering.

“Faculty were so encouraging,” Qattawi said. “All the time they were opening doors for me if I had any questions or concerns. I didn’t feel I was treated differently.”

Thomas Kurfess, who was then on Clemson’s automotive engineering faculty, remembers co-advising Qattawi and having the honor in 2012 of helping place the hood on her shoulders to mark the completion of her Ph.D. program.

“Ala made the job easy, but she is also just a good person, so she’s got the whole package,” said Kurfess, now Regents’ Professor and HUSCO/Ramirez Distinguished Chair in Fluid Power and Motion Control at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

As a Ph.D. student, Qattawi focused on origami sheet metal forming for vehicles. After receiving her doctorate, she stayed at Clemson for two years as a postdoctoral researcher and had a chance to apply her research to Deep Orange 3, a prototype vehicle designed and built by students.

“They designed a body-in-white for the vehicle out of origami sheet metal,” Qattawi said. “I helped them in the analysis and in material properties calculation, and they did the manufacturing and fabrication of the sheets. That was really cool to see something start from the concept, idea, and analysis, and then you see an actual product at the end. That was one of the greatest feelings an engineer can feel.”

Qattawi went on to serve as an assistant professor at the University of California, Merced for three years before moving to the University of Toledo. Within her research group at the Integrated Design and Manufacturing Lab, Ala and her students focus on advanced and sustainable manufacturing, studying additive manufacturing, foldable metal structures, material design for manufacturing, and manufacturing energy analysis.

She has won a number of awards, including the Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers, the Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and the Toyota Programmable System Innovation Fellowship Award.

Even with her career success, Qattawi remains aware of the biases women face. She said that when she goes to conferences she sometimes chats with colleagues and has been surprised to hear many researchers and professors have as many as four or five children.

“If you talk about your kids, you are seen as a mom, you are not seen as a researcher or successful person, and it just baffles me why,” Qattawi said. “But hopefully this is changing.”