Avraham (Avi) Benatar is an Associate Professor of Welding Engineering and Director of the Plastics and Composites Joining Laboratory. He is also the Coordinator of the Welding Engineering Distance Education Master of Science program and the Faculty Director of the College of Engineering Master of Global Engineering Leadership. He earned S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Benatar teaches in the areas of joining of plastics and composites and welding design. His research interests include adhesive bonding and mechanical joining of plastics and composites, fundamentals of plastics and composites welding, optimization and control of welding processes, development of new welding methods, design of welded joints in plastics and composites, including the use of moiré and speckle interferometry for residual stress measurement, ultrasonic processing of materials, welding design, modeling of brazed joints, and fitness-for-service.

Dr. Benatar was elected Society of Plastics Engineers Fellow in 2003. He was awarded a Lady Davis Visiting Associate Professor Fellowship to the School of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in the 1998-99 academic year.  Dr. Benatar received the 1992 American Welding Society Adams Memorial Award and the 1990 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award.  From 1997 to 2003, he was Chairman and U.S. Delegate to the International Institute for Welding Commission 16 on plastics welding and adhesive bonding technology.

Dr. Benatar founded and was the first chairman of the American Welding Society G1 Committee on Joining of Plastics and Composites.  He was also one of the founding members of and was Chairman and Technical Program Chairman of the Society of Plastics Engineers Special Interest Group on Joining of Plastics and Composites.  He has more than 100 refereed publications and has co-authored one book and co-edited a handbook.