Mansour Karkoub is the Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Michael E. and Patricia P. Aldredge Endowed Chair, and professor in the area of Robotics, Controls, and Autonomous Systems. Dr. Karkoub received B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

He also received an H.D.R. from the University of Versailles, France in 2003. He started his academic career as a lecturer at the University of Minnesota and researcher at the Minnesota Super Computer Institute. His experience in autonomous vehicles and self-driving vehicles started in 2002 when he joined the French “National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Controls (INRIA)” in Rocquencourt, France as a professor and researcher.

In 2005, he joined the Petroleum Institute (PI) as a Department Head for the mechanical engineering department and later nominated as Assistant Provost in charge of all accreditation activities in the college of engineering.

In 2009, Dr. Karkoub joined Texas A&M University branch campus at Qatar as professor of mechanical engineering. He was also an Eminent Scholar at the University of Aix Marseilles, France in the summer of 2009 as member of a consortium on “Self-driving Vehicles Infrastructure”.

He is the recipient of the “2019 Faculty Research Excellence Award” and the 2012 “Distinguished Achievement Award” from the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. In the past 10 years, Dr. Karkoub raised more than $7 MN in research funding in the area of autonomous robotic systems from QNRF and the oil and gas industry.

In 2022, he received $1.2 MN research funds from an international consortium for research on smart, connected and autonomous vehicles, and energy systems for efficient, safe, secure, and sustainable transportation in metropolitan cities. He is the founder and director of the Smart Systems Laboratory at Texas A&M University at Qatar; home for research on ground and underwater autonomous vehicles.

He published more than 190 peer-reviewed articles and one textbook on computer aided design. Dr. Karkoub is a fellow of ASME, fellow of the Institute of Engineering Technology (IET), fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering (IMechE), and a senior member of IEEE. He is also an active ABET program evaluator, a registered professional engineer (PE) in the state of Texas and a licensed engineer in the UK.