Dr. Elwakil has made numerous contributions in discovery, student learning, leadership development, and industry engagement. Dr. Elwakil is certified Professional Engineer (PE), Certified Cost Professional (CCP), and Certified Project Management Professional (PMP). Dr. Elwakil has exhibited scholarship through a consistent commitment to Construction Management (CM) research and education employing a systematic program of inquiry and compilation of a body of knowledge concerning modeling and simulation of construction organizations and infrastructure. Specifically his work deals with modeling and simulation of organization performance and infrastructure management. These topic areas are increasingly important to the construction industry both domestically and internationally. Dr. Elwakil’s activities have included a substantial degree of discovery and engagement activity in support of the development of an appropriate body of knowledge for teaching and learning.

Since coming to Purdue University Dr. Elwakil has been awarded “Purdue Polytechnic Institute Exceptional Early Career Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching “and “The School of Construction Management Exceptional Early Career Teaching Award” by students’ vote. Dr. Elwakil has been awarded “The School of Construction Management Outstanding Faculty in Discovery” and “The School of Construction Management Outstanding Faculty in Learning” by faculty’s vote.

Dr. Elwakil research findings have been documented in 19 journal articles , one book, 24 conference papers , 3 posters, and 23 technical funded reports. He has chaired two PhD and five master’s levels and he has chaired and has been a committee member in 17 graduate students. Dr. Elwakil has established a research team that published some journals and conference papers.

Dr. Elwakil current projects are $ 312,000 from the Universidad Nacional de San Agustín (UNSA) in Arequipa, Peru (NEXUS), $ 108,000 from construction and information modeling company, $ 39,890 from construction healthcare facility company, and $ 4500 from American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE). He has been awarded $ 5000 from Purdue University internal grants. Dr. Elwakil is a Principal Investigator in $ 13.5 million UNSA & Purdue Partnership (NEXUS) which is Global initiatives in discovery and Purdue’s growing international impact to make UNSA the premier location in Latin America for cutting-edge environmental sustainability research and innovation, and technology transfer.

Since coming to Purdue University, Dr. Elwakil has applied for Eleven Grants for NSF, DOT, USAID, and UKAID to support his research in the area of Infrastructure Management ($ 8.8 M). Dr. Elwakil has collaborated with Discovery Park and submitted $ 600,000 for UNSA, Peru grants. Dr. Elwakil has been working with universities in the Middle East “Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia” to establish a research team. Three Pre-proposals have been submitted to Qatar National foundations and Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences ($1.5 M).

A notable component of Dr. Elwakil’s teaching and learning activity has been in the development of the Modeling and simulation area of specialization for the graduate program. This area of specialization is the first of its kind in the construction management program. The teaching materials and course concepts utilized in the course were the result of Dr. Elwakil’s scholarly discovery and engagement activities. Dr. Elwakil developed a new graduate course “BCM 581: Simulation and Modeling Construction Processes” which has been considered by construction management graduate students and engineering students. Dr. Elwakil has redesigned a core course “BCM275: Construction Plans & Measurement” to include the modern construction techniques and add more infrastructure topics to fit the new change of the curriculum and college transformation. Dr. Elwakil has modified a core course “BCM 475: Cost Control” to reflect the Polytechnic new curriculum project based.

Dr. Elwakil has a record of service activities at Purdue. These activities have supported the department, college and university as well as serve the construction industry. Dr. Elwakil is a Co-chair of postdoctoral researcher committee and a member of data committee in the NEXUS institute collaboration project, the latest Purdue’s growing international impact. Dr. Elwakil has served the department and university in committees that support educational interests such as curriculum, undergraduate and graduate education, as well as diversity and recruitment. Dr. Elwakil has a record of contributions to student diversity and inclusiveness. He used to work with undergraduate international students to help them to adapt easily in the polytechnic Institute and Purdue University community through the college’s faculty-to-student mentorship program. 

Prior coming to Purdue, Dr. Elwakil was an assistant professor at California State University. He had been awarded $180,000.00 from Caltrans for improve and strengthen the public private partnership discipline. He developed some new master’s level courses. Dr. Elwakil also developed Two training courses for Industry; public private partnership (PPP) for “Caltrans”. Dr. Elwakil was a Post-Doc at Concordia University, Canada before joining California State University. He taught some construction engineering and management courses and leaded some funded research with Qatar National Research Foundation and Infrastructure Canada.

As a professional and consultant in construction industry and infrastructure management, Dr. Elwakil worked in USAID projects, Caltrans, and with Infrastructure Canada in large scale and infrastructure projects.

Dr. Elwakil has leaded a team of talented graduate students ( PhD , and Master's) that works on Infrastructure Management , Gas and oil pipelines Disasters Management , Organization Performance , and Sustainability.