Dr. Mohammad Khalessi

Founder, President & CEO

Destiny provided Dr. Khalessi the good fortune to be born into family with generations of engineers and scientists and a father who was a Supreme Court Justice in Tehran. After achieving impressive scholarly success in the prestigious Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Dr. Khalessi followed in the family tradition and accepted a full scholarship at UCLA where he earned his Ph.D. from the Structures and Mechanics School with a dissertation titled The Development of Reliability-Based Design Optimization Using Probabilistic Methods. Since that time, Dr. Khalessi has worked for fortune 500 companies such as Allied Signal, Rockwell, and Boeing and where he gained significant industrial experience in deterministic and probabilistic structural analysis and design. After 20 years of success and accolades including a 1996 Congress of United States Official Proclamation, Dr. Khalessi and his long-time colleague and partner, Dr. Hong-Zong Lin, decided to take their technologies to the next level in their own start-up enterprise known as PredictionProbe.

Dr. Khalessi received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1983. Dr. Khalessi has over 20 years of industrial experience in deterministic and probabilistic structural analysis and design including static and dynamic finite element (FE) analysis, fatigue life prediction, creep life estimation, and structural testing. His extensive experience in Probabilistic Technology includes development of many probabilistic methods, development of a robust technique for probabilistic-based analysis of composite structures, integration of probabilistic methods with finite element technique, development of reliability-based optimization algorithms, probabilistic modeling of random phenomena, empirical determination of distribution models and estimation of their statistical parameters from observed data, probabilistic reliability analysis, probabilistic risk analysis, Bayesian networking, reliability verification tests, and statistical process control.

Dr. Khalessi co-founded PredictionProbe in October 2001 as Chief Executive Officer. Prior to PredictionProbe, Dr. Khalessi worked for Boeing North American (BNA), previously known as Rockwell, for 10 years, where he was principal investigator and program director for many contracted research and development and internal research and development projects including Army’s probabilistic FE technology development projects, and Boeing’s probabilistic analysis of composite structures, probabilistic debris impact damage model for laminated composite structures, manufacturing cost optimization of composite structures, and FE-based probabilistic structural analysis and design (PSAD) projects. He has also been the lead engineer responsible for application of the PSAD technology to many advanced structures including but not limited to Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) cryogenic upper stage structure, X-33 engine reliability verification, probabilistic-based integrated vehicle health management for X-33, probabilistic analysis of composite liquid hydrogen tank, and probabilistic analysis of composite wing. Prior to joining Boeing, Dr. Khalessi was an engineering specialist at AlliedSignal for five years, where he performed deterministic and probabilistic structural analysis on many advanced structures including probabilistic and deterministic structural analysis of V-22 infrared suppresser system, reliability analysis of Trident II (D5) gas hydraulic assemblies, and risk analysis of the ELITE ceramic recuperator. Dr. Khalessi has authored more than 30 technical papers and over 100 technical reports and is one of the pioneers in practical application of the probabilistic methods (PM), integration of PM with finite element techniques, and the development of first-order reliability method in original space.

Dr. Khalessi has received numerous awards and recognition including the 1996 Congress of United States Official Proclamation, prestigious 1996 SAE International Probabilistic Methods Implementation Award (jointly with Dr. Lin), 1996 Engineer of the Year Award from Advanced Engineering Department of BNA, and the nomination for the BNA 1993 and 1996 Engineer of the Year. He was BNA nominee for the 1995 AIAA Walter J. and Angeline H. Crinchlow Trust Prize. He received the 1994 Outstanding Engineering Merit Award from the Orange County Engineering Council for his achievements in PSAD technology. Dr. Khalessi (jointly with Dr. Lin) has a patent for development of a new iteration procedure for identification of the most-probable-failure point in original space. He has also served on various technical committees including Chairman of the SAE G-11 PM Communication Committee, Chairman of PM Application Committee, Chairman of the PM Workshop Committee, and. a member of G-11 PM Leadership Council. He has also served on AIAA PM Panel and has been a reviewer of AIAA and SAE Journals.