Dr Zafer Kazancı is a Senior Lecturer, and Director of the Advanced Composites Research Group (ACRG) at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. He has a wide research history on the behaviour of composite structures under extreme loads and specialises in impact and blast loading. His research expertise also encompasses flight vehicle design, mechanical metamaterials, crash and crush analysis, bird-strike certification, crashworthiness and ballistic impact.

He has delivered short courses on advanced composite materials and finite element methods for engineering and has been invited to speak at workshops on the explosive blast response of composite structures across the world. He is an EPSRC Peer Review College and also a member of the International Society of Impact Engineering and Structural Impact Group of ITU.

Dr. Kazancı was at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), K.J. Bathe's Finite Element Research Lab as a Research Scholar before becoming an Associate Professor at the Turkish Air Force Academy. He was head of the Scientific Supervisory Board and also the ERASMUS Institutional Coordinator. He got numerous awards from the Air Force Administration for his outstanding academic performance in Aerospace Engineering Department including Best Professor, Superior Service and Academic Excellence Awards.

In 2018, Dr Kazancı was awarded the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship with Bombardier Aerospace where he was leading a programme of technology transfer to serve specific modelling and design capability needs of the industry partner. Dr Kazancı has also led (PI) and worked as co-investigator (CI) on several projects with collaborating international industrial partners, institutions/universities and governmental bodies.