William Thomas, PhD, P.E.

William Thomas, PhD, P.E., is a licensed Professional Engineer (Texas) with over 20 years of experience in the automotive, oil and gas, and manufacturing industries. He is currently working for O-I Glass Inc and has previously worked for MTD Products, General Motors, ExxonMobil, and TechnipFMC. He received his Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from Kettering University and Doctorate from Ohio State University in 1999. His dissertation involved working on the Near Zero Stamping program at the Engineering Research Center for Net Shape Manufacturing. He has published over a dozen papers, received 3 patents, and authored two chapters in the Encyclopedia for Maritime and Offshore Engineering. He was the keynote speaker at the 2017 Convergence Conference. He has taught at Wayne State, ITT Tech and the University of Houston University as an adjunct professor since 2005. His expertise is in fatigue, fracture mechanics, finite element analysis, plasticity, time and frequency domain analysis, fluid structure interaction, subsea engineering, drilling, pressure containment, and cryogenic containment. His passion is collaborating for innovation, inspiring and teaching others.