Professor Autar Kaw, A Global Teacher
Autar Kaw is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the Jerome Krivanek Distinguished Teacher at the University of South Florida, nationally recognized for his contributions to engineering education. He earned his Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Clemson University.
Professor Kaw’s work spans engineering education research, personalized and blended learning, flipped classrooms, open courseware development, composite materials mechanics, sports analytics, and bascule bridge design. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Florida Department of Transportation, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Since 2001, he has served as the lead Principal Investigator on seven NSF-funded engineering education projects totaling $3.3 million. These initiatives have explored the impact of innovative learning environments on metacognitive development, conceptual understanding through multiple representations, group collaboration, student perceptions, and activation of prior knowledge.
Under his leadership, his team developed and refined open educational resources (OERs) in Numerical Methods, which attract over 1 million page views and YouTube lecture views annually, along with 60,000 yearly visitors to the widely followed “Numerical Methods Guy” blog.
Professor Kaw has authored more than 135 refereed technical papers, and his opinion pieces have appeared in The Tampa Bay Times, The Tampa Tribune, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His work has been featured and cited in Inside Higher Ed, ASEE Prism, Voice of America, NSF Discovery, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the U.S. Congressional Record, and Florida Senate Resolution. Among his many honors, he received the 2012 U.S. Professor of the Year Award for doctoral and research universities, presented by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.