Dr. Paul Zarda Has Significant Years of Professional Experience
Dr. Paul Zarda is a highly qualified Mechanical Engineer with significant years of experience. Carrying a strong professional background, he serves as Chairman of the Industrial Advisory Committee for UCF’s MMAE Department, and he is an active member of the UCF’s Industrial Engineering Advisory Committee With over 30 years of experience in numerical analysis techniques, he has worked both in the area of finite element and finite difference algorithms.
Dr. Paul Zarda has both theoretical and practical expertise in the area of Mechanical Computer Aided Engineering (MCAE) and Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE). He was the chairperson of the Mechanical Design benchmarking team at the local and corporate level. In addition, he was the Program Manager of On DARPA’s MADE and RaDEO program in Knowledge-based Engineering. Owing to his skills and expertise, he was chosen from among 80 engineers spanning 25 contractors as Chairman of the Guidance Team. This team received recognition from the Director of DARPA for their contribution in KBE methodology.
The reason behind so many accomplishments is his academic qualifications. He has done Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Columbia University in the area of bioengineering and biomechanics He was an Assistant Professor in Engineering Science at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. from 1974 through 1976. He was a research analyst at the David Taylor Naval Research and Development Center from 1976 through 1978 concentrating in the area of finite element modeling of acoustical fluid/structure interaction problems. In 1978, he joined Westinghouse where he was a Senior Engineer in the design and analysis of nuclear steam generators.
Thereafter, in the year 1980, he joined Lockheed Martin and fulfilling all his responsibilities till date. Manager of the Engineering Methods Group, Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff assigned to Research and Technology, and Program Manager of several contracts with WPAFB. He is an expert in finite element techniques applied to stress and dynamic analyses within Lockheed Martin. He has taught over 20 courses in the CES program at Lockheed Martin as well as approximately 15 courses to over 300 students in UCF’s undergraduate and graduate program where he is Research Professor of Engineering in the Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering Department.
Dr. Paul Zarda’s work has led to the development of various tools that increase an engineer’s productivity. He is responsible for the development of FEM/SINDA, an industry standard thermal analysis code that has significantly changed the way thermal analysis is performed, offering significant productivity gains to the engineering community.
