School of Engineering

Rene Gabbai, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Mechanical Engineering
202-319-6952 phone
202-319-5173 fax
gabbai@cua.edu

Education
B.S. in Biomedical Engineering, University of Miami, 1998
M.S. in Biomedical Engineering, University of Miami, 2000
Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers University, 2006

Biography
Dr. Rene Gabbai has held the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Catholic University of America since August, 2009. From November, 2007 to June, 2009 he held the position of Structural Engineer at 2H Offshore, Inc of Houston, TX. In this capacity, he primarily focused on the characterization of the structural response of marine risers and conductors covering a full range of configurations used in the search and extraction of hydrocarbons. From January, 2005 to November, 2007 he was an NRC Postdoctoral Research Associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. During this time he pursued research in the area of structural response of tall buildings to wind loading, aeroelasticity, and wind load factors for dynamically sensitive structures. Dr. Gabbai earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ) in 2005 under the supervision of Professor Haym Benaroya. His dissertation research focused on the development of a first-principles framework for the derivation of reduced-order models for vortex-induced vibration. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL) in 1998 and 2000, respectively.

Representative Publications
R. D. Gabbai and E. Simiu (2010), "Aerodynamic damping in the along-wind response of tall buildings", ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, 136(1) (in press).

E. Simiu, R. D. Gabbai, and W. P. Fritz (2008), "Wind-induced tall building response", Wind and Structures, 11 (6): 427-440.

R. D. Gabbai (2007), "On the aeroelastic indifference of Brancusi’s Endless Column," ASCE Journal of Engineering Mechanics, 134 (6): 462-465.

R. D. Gabbai, W. P. Fritz, A. P. Wright and E. Simiu (2007), "Assessment of ASCE 7 Standard wind load factors for tall building response estimates," ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, 134 (5): 842-845.

R. D. Gabbai and H. Benaroya (2007), "A first-principles derivation procedure for wake-body models in vortex-induced vibration: Proof-of-concept," Journal of Sound and Vibration, 312 (1-2): 19-38.

H. Benaroya and R. D. Gabbai (2007), "Modeling vortex-induced fluid-structure interaction," Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical & Engineering Sciences, 366: 1231-74.

R. D. Gabbai and H. Benaroya (2005), "An overview of modeling and experiments of vortex-induced vibration of circular cylinders", Journal of Sound and Vibration, 285 (3-12): 575-616.

Website
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