Rate My Professor Beshoy Morkos

Beshoy Morkos is a Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia, where he directs the MODEL (Manufacturing Optimization, Design, and Engineering Education Lab) Research Group, one of the largest research groups at the institution. He earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2006, M.S. in 2008, and Ph.D. in 2012, all from Clemson University. His Ph.D. dissertation, supervised by Dr. Joshua Summers, received the 2014 ASME Computers and Information in Engineering Dissertation of the Year Award for its innovative work on representation and reasoning tools for requirements analysis. Following his doctorate, he served as a postdoctoral researcher in Clemson's Department of Engineering & Science Education alongside Dr. Lisa Benson, conducting NSF-funded studies on engineering student motivation, persistence, and technology use in classrooms. Prior to UGA, where he joined as Associate Professor in 2019 and was promoted to Professor in 2025, Morkos was Associate Professor (2018-2019) and Assistant Professor (2012-2018) at the Florida Institute of Technology. His early career included roles as Research Associate at the BMW Information Technology Research Center and Manufacturing Engineer at Robert Bosch Corporation.

Dr. Morkos's research interests encompass system design, manufacturing, and engineering education. In system design, he develops Model-Based computational representation and reasoning tools to manage complex systems. His manufacturing efforts aim to reframe product and process representations for better decision-making by engineers and planners, incorporating AI-driven approaches and human-AI collaboration. In engineering education, he examines student motivation, engineering identity, and design experiences to boost persistence. His research is funded by the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, U.S. Navy, U.S. Department of Agriculture, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and industry partners such as Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Siemens, and King's Hawaiian. He founded the Manufacturing Living Labs initiative to advance industry-academic partnerships. Key honors include ASME Fellow (2026), UGA Office of Research Faculty Fellow (2023-24), Florida Tech Rising Star (2017), ASME Student Chapter Young Professor Award (2014), and Arch T. Colwell Merit Outstanding Paper Award (2009) for his SAE paper on automotive forward lighting systems.