Our Staff Members

Prof. Mohamad Kaseem

Mohamad Kassem is Professor of Digital Construction Management and the Lead of the Digital Construction Research theme in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University. He is also the International Committee Chair at the International Centre of Connected Construction (IC3).

Professor Kassem has an established leadership and reputation in Digital Construction with a proven track record across research, enterprise, and teaching. Previous roles include the Lead for the Digital Built Environment research group, the Head of Subject for the Project and Construction Project Management Group, and the Director of Enterprise at Department of Mechanical and Construction Engineering at Northumbria University. He was also the Chair of the Human Data Interaction (HDI) technical committee of the European Council for Computing in Construction (EC3) between 2019 and 2021.

Prof. Kassem has spent short visiting academic time at prestigious universities including ETH Zurich and the University of Cambridge. He has published more than 120 outputs in international journals and conferences. His successful funding awards include multi-million-pound research and enterprise grants, co-funded by Horizon Europe, Innovate UK and other international research and innovation councils.

Professor Kassem had a number of consultancy appointments to several public sector bodies including the European Commission, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and various governments, advising about strategic digital transformation of their construction markets. The impact from his research and enterprise activities in this area was used in a REF 2021 Impact Case Study, entitled ‘Transforming the global construction sector through digitalisation’ evidencing impact in 11 countries around the world.

Prof. Kassem received the Scherer Award for outstanding service to the computing community in the context of EC3 in 2021.

He is an expert Grant Evaluator for international and national funding programmes including EU Horizon Framework Programme; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada); the Centre for Digital Built Britain (Cambridge), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK), Natural Environment Research Council (UK), Newton Fund (UK), Norway Research Council, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), and the American University of Beirut (Lebanon).

He has delivered from than 28 invited keynotes around the world in both industry and academic conferences. He has examined PhD students at more than 10 universities in the UK and abroad.

Prof. Kassem is a founding member of the BIM Excellence Initiative, and one of the leading contributors to their Macro BIM adoption project, an international project aiming to be the worldwide leading research effort for country-scale BIM adoption analysis and policy development.

He has a proven track record of working with the industry having collaborated with more than 30 companies in the UK and internationally. Prof. Kassem is keen to develop collaboration with others in academia and the industry under the following themes: digitalisation of construction and engineering projects; data-centric construction, Digital Twin for construction and operation of built/urban environment; decarbonisation through digitalisation; blockchain applications in construction, BIM-enabled digital transformation policies; performance management studies; and project and construction management. He welcomes applications from prospective PhD students on these themes.