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Vahid Motevalli

American mechanical engineer

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ7908635 ↗
Source-derived summary

Vahid Motevalli is the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs since January 2026 at Penn State Harrisburg and served as interim from July 2023 in this same role. He joined Penn State Harrisburg as director of the School of Science, Engineering, and Technology in August of 2021. From January 2023 until August 2023, he concurrently served as interim Associate Vice Chancellor for Research. Prior to joining Penn State, he was Associate Dean of Engineering for Research and Innovation and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee. In his role, he was responsible for overall research activities of the college including two centers of excellence, Center for Manufacturing Research (CMR) and Center for Energy Systems Research (CESR) as well as coordination of graduate student funding, research strategies, research infrastructure and providing advice and administration of all research related functions. In addition, he was providing support and launching initiatives to grow innovation and entrepreneurship programs within the college and university.

Biography

Prior to coming to TTU, Motevelli founded the Center for Technology Development at Purdue University (2011), led the EcoCar 2 (2011-2013) project at Purdue and served the Head of Mechanical Engineering Technology Department (2009-2012) at Purdue University.

In August 2008, Dr. Motevalli accepted to serve as Professor of Engineering and Associate Provost for Graduate Studies and Research of the Dubai Aerospace Enterprise University after having served during 2007–08 academic year in that position in a Consulting role. Upon closure of DAEU, he spend a year on a leave for educational purposes from the George Washington University where he had been director of the Aviation Institute from 2004 to 2008, co-director of the institute (2002–04) and Director of the Aviation Safety and Security Certificate Program from 1998 to 2008.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Vahid Motevalli” is american mechanical engineer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Vahid, Motevalli and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2026, 2023, 2021, 2011—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Vahid, Motevalli and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american mechanical engineer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7908635. VIAF identifies the subject as 48785685. The Library of Congress control number is no90006008. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2026, 2023, 2021 and 2011.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Vahid Motevalli”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Vahid Motevalli primary sources, Vahid Motevalli archive and Vahid research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Vahid Motevalli”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Vahid Motevalli” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.