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Dr. Tod A. Laursen serves as Chancellor of the American University of Sharjah. He earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University in 1986, followed by an MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 1989 and 1992, respectively. Prior to his current role, Dr. Laursen held faculty positions at Duke University from 1992 to 2010, with appointments in civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering and materials science, and biomedical engineering. He served as Senior Associate Dean for Education in the Pratt School of Engineering from 2003 to 2008 and as Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from 2008 to 2010.
Dr. Laursen’s research specializes in computational mechanics, with a focus on nonlinear solid mechanics, finite element methods, and modeling of contact, impact, and friction. He has published over 100 refereed articles, book chapters, and abstracts, and authored the book Computational Contact and Impact Mechanics: Fundamentals of Modeling Interfacial Phenomena in Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis in 2003. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the International Association for Computational Mechanics, and the United States Association for Computational Mechanics. Dr. Laursen previously served as President of Khalifa University from 2010 to 2018, Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor of the State University of New York from 2018 to 2020, and Acting President of SUNY Polytechnic Institute from 2021 to 2022. He assumed the chancellorship at AUS in 2023.
American University of Sharjah approves innovative MS and MFA programs starting Fall 2026, addressing data, sustainability, and design demands in UAE.
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