Business Leaders: UMaine's Habib Dagher leads composite materials revolution
Photo / Fred Field
Habib Dagher, founding executive director of the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center, has earned more than 120 patents and built a team of 350 staff. Dagher and his team are working on diverse technologies including 3-D printed houses, lightweight bridges, floating wind turbines and bulletproof shelters.
Habib Dagher understands that it’s not enough to create something amazing in the lab. The inventor must then find a way to bring that creation out into the world, to apply it in ways that help people. He has been doing exactly that for 27 years as founding executive director of the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center.
Since 1996, Dagher has led the fast-growing center, securing more than 120 patents and amassing a team of 350 people. Dagher and his team are working on diverse technologies that include 3-D printed houses, lightweight bridges, floating wind turbines and bulletproof shelters. In the past year, efforts to build offshore wind sites have moved forward and the 3-D printed houses have the potential to help alleviate Maine’s housing crunch. The center’s innovations have yielded 10 spinoff companies to date, with more on the horizon.
Mainebiz: What led you to your current role at the University of Maine?
Habib Dagher: My degrees are from the University of Wisconsin, Madison — my undergraduate degree is in civil engineering but I have two master’s degrees, one in structural engineering and one in engineering mechanics, and I have a doctorate in structural engineering from there, as well. [It’s also where Dagher met his wife and got married.] Both my wife and I came to Maine 37 years ago, and I’m looking forward to 37 years more. It’s a wonderful place to be. We started the Composites Center 27 years ago, and we’ve grown from four people at the time, and now we have 350 people who work here. We’re the largest university-based research center in Maine.
MB: I read that you have over 120 patents. Have you always been an inventor?
HD: We’re a research center, and we’re all about innovation. If you don’t invent as a research center, you’re not a research center. [Laughs.] So, yes, I’ve always been very interested in innovation – I even had a chemistry lab in my bedroom as a teenager.
MB: Does the center have an overarching goal or mission?
HD: Our mission is to bring green energy and materials to society, and not only to develop the technologies but educate the leaders that will take these technologies and put them in society. So we’re developing technologies, but we’re also developing leaders.
MB: Can you briefly explain one of the projects the Composites Center is working on?
HD: One technology we just finished is called the G-Girder. I tell everybody the ‘G’ stands for ‘Genius Girders.’ We have patents on that, and now it’s licensed to the bridge company [AIT Composites] in Brewer that’s now producing these and shipping them across the country. The girders are lighter and last longer than steel, and they stack together for shipping. You can fit all the G-Girders for one bridge on the bed of a single truck. … What we try to do with these technologies is double and even triple the life of a bridge, and with minimal maintenance.
MB: What aspect of the center’s work are you most proud of?
HD: We’ve financially sponsored over 2,700 students to the University of Maine, from more than 35 academic departments. And students that become interns in our laboratory, every one of them had at least one job offer when they graduated. We’ve had 10 spinoff companies from our laboratory, and over 30,000 visitors to the lab. Another thing I’m very proud of is the partners and clients we have. We have over 500 clients and partners from across the globe that work with us.
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