About me

School

My name is Omar AlDajani. I am a PhD student in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department. My research is on experimentally investigating hydraulic fracture behavior in shales, with an emphasis on their interaction with bedding layers. A unique and novel experimental setup was designed and fabricated for this purpose, and it incorporates a load frame, pressure-volume actuators, a high-speed camera, a high-resolution camera, acoustic sensors, control box, and a data acquisition box. The goal is to synchronize all this to document hydraulically fractured shale specimens under various loading conditions analogous to how they are fractured in the earth.
I have always been a curious child, taking things apart to see how they work. I adopt this curiosity to this day in my research, but have always found barriers that prevent me from making my ideas into reality. I hope this class will break down that barrier.

Other than School

Besides being a full-time PhD student, I am a husband and father First! My wife, Lubna, is also a full-time PhD student here and is a true inspiration to me. Let's be honest here, being a mom is much harder than being a dad. How she manages to perform her motherly duties beyond expectations while excelling at her research is a mystery to me. We are blessed with an amazing and beautiful baby girl we named Acia. Being around her is amazing, showing her the world is amazing, and I am hoping this class will allow me to pass on the tools to explore my curiosities to her. Despite living through a pandemic, the world is an incredible place, and what humans can do to make it a better place is incredible. That's the mentality I want my daughter to grow up with.
Oh, and this is how I look like: