Mohsen Sanai is the director of the Center for Special Projects in the Physical Sciences Division at SRI International. In this role, he leads projects that integrate SRI’s multi-disciplinary technologies into solutions and physical tools that are used for demilitarization of munitions and neutralization of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Sanai has more than 30 years of experience in the mechanics of compressible and incompressible fluids, detonation physics, modeling of explosives in numerical codes, simulation of dynamic loads, simulation of blast waves, thermohydraulic problems in reactor safety, fluid structure interaction, assessment of industrial hazards including fire, and energy system analyses and syntheses. He has made significant contributions to the assessments of safety hazards involving explosives, fragments, and fire based on scale model experiments as well as finite-element and engineering computer simulation codes. SRI’s Dilute Explosive Tile (DET), invented by Sanai, has been used extensively in Department of Defense (DoD) field experiments to simulate nuclear weapon effects and to neutralize IEDs without precipitating high-order detonation.

Sanai has published numerous articles in scientific journals, and holds two individual and six joint patents. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT. Sanai received his M.S. in mechanical engineering from California State University, Long Beach, and his B.S in mechanical engineering from the University of London, King's College.