Adel "Tony" Saada, Ph.D

Adel “Tony” Saada, age 91 of Shaker Heights, OH, passed away peacefully at home on November 2, 2025. Beloved husband of the late Nancy Saada (nee Hernan); loving father of Christiane S. Blume (Benjamin) of Wheaton, IL, and Richard A. Saada of Sammamish, WA; dear grandfather of Nathaniel (Nicole) and Catherine Blume, and Caroline and Steven Saada.

Adel Antoine Selim Saada was born October 24, 1934 to Selim Nakhla Saada and Marie Chahyne in Heliopolis, Egypt. He grew up in Heliopolis with his brother Roland and his sisters Fernande and Yolande. In his youth he had many adventures, including fleeing angry mobs, appearing as a spear carrier in the opera Aida at the Cairo opera house, and escaping from an army assault on a student protest with a bullet hole in the bicycle he was riding.

Upon graduating from Cairo University in 1955, Tony was awarded a 3-year full fellowship from the Suez Canal Company, and later the French government, to study at Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures de Paris, a top engineering school. He received his degree of “Ingénieur” with distinction in 1958. His fellowship was extended another year to specialize in geotechnical engineering at the University of Grenoble, France, where he earned the equivalent of a Master of Science degree in 1959. Tony came to Princeton on a fellowship in 1959, and earned his PhD in Civil Engineering from Princeton University in 1961.

While studying in Grenoble, Tony, a child of the desert, decided to try skiing. He didn’t know how to stop, and crashed into Nancy, who went headlong into a snowbank. He offered her hot chocolate and Turkish cigarettes. She accepted the hot chocolate, but turned up her nose at the cigarettes. Their romance started in Paris, during Nancy’s junior year abroad from Elmira College. When Tony arrived in Princeton they resumed their romance. Marriage followed on June 5, 1960, and their family expanded with Christiane’s birth in 1961, and Richard’s birth in 1964.

After receiving his PhD from Princeton University, Dr. Saada went on to a groundbreaking career in soil mechanics and foundation engineering. He joined Case Institute of Technology in 1962, and was put in charge of building a program in geotechnical engineering as well as developing a teaching and research soils laboratory. He started as an Assistant Professor in 1962, and became a Full Professor in 1973. From 1978 to 1998 he served as the Chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering. He continued to teach for 60 years, before retiring in 2022.

Dr. Saada developed extensive equipment for testing hollow soil cylinders. SPAC, the Saada Pneumatic Analog Computer, was the first device to test soils in various synchronized combinations of stresses. It was used by a number of institutions and inspired many of the electronically controlled testing machines used today. In 1969, Dr. Saada published one of the first constitutive equations for anisotropic clay.

In 1974 Dr. Saada published a textbook titled Elasticity, Theory, and Applications. A second expanded edition was published in 1993, an addendum in 2000, and an updated edition in 2009.

Among the many awards Dr. Saada received throughout his career were being voted Outstanding Civil Engineer of the Year by the Cleveland section of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1992, receiving the Telford Prize of the Institution of Civil Engineers, U.K. in 1995, for his paper on fracture mechanics, and being made a Member of the Academy of Geoprofessionals with the title of Diplomate in 2014.

One of the most ambitious projects Dr. Saada undertook was a U.S.-France joint research project on the behavior of granular non-cohesive soil. He convinced the Geomechanics division of the National Science Foundation, along with several ministries of the French government, to support the creation of a database and the validation of numerous constitutive equations proposed in the late 70s and early 80s. After four years of work with the University of Grenoble, a workshop was held at Case in 1987. Nearly every important modeler in the world attended the conference and tested the performance of their formulas against test results generated by Dr. Saada and his coworkers in the U.S. and France. A modern update of the database allows it to still be used by researchers to this day.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Saada published over 62 research papers, and numerous technical reports, university publications, and state-of-the-art papers. He received over 20 research grants, supervised 17 graduate theses and taught 9 different engineering courses.

In 2000 he established the Saada Family Fellowship Fund, which provides 2 to 3 fellowships a year to students pursuing a PhD in civil engineering. Since its inception, it has provided $1.2 million in student support.

Dr. Saada played an integral role in fundraising for what became the Saada Family Geotechnical Engineering Laboratory at Case, which was opened in 2016.

Tony loved to putter in his basement wood shop, and made walnut Parsons tables, which have no nails, and the stereo cabinets still in our living room today. He and Nancy loved to play tennis together, and he continued to enjoy it as a spectator in his later years.

One of Tony’s passions over the years was seeing the world. Together with his wife Nancy, they travelled to all 7 continents. They saw the great wall of China, went on safari in Africa, zip lined in Costa Rica, paraded with penguins in Antarctica, visited the cathedral at the Kremlin in Moscow, climbed Machu Picchu in Peru, and watched blue footed boobies in the Galapagos. They went to India, Bhutan, Brazil, Italy, France, Croatia, New Zealand, Australia, Slovenia, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Greece, Guadeloupe, England, Austria, Kuwait, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Hong Kong, Spain, Belgium, Bermuda, and more. In the U.S. they travelled to most of the states, including Alaska and Hawaii.

After that initial ski crash in France, both Tony and Nancy became better skiers, and enjoyed many trips to Colorado, Utah, and Switzerland in search of nice blue cruising runs. Over the course of many family vacations, they passed on their love of skiing to their children and grandchildren.

Tony and Nancy were members of the Saturday Night Dance Club for many years, where they enjoyed ballroom dancing once a month with a live orchestra. They attended many seasons of the Cleveland Orchestra. Tony listened to classical music, opera, jazz, bossa nova, and the French singers of his youth.

After his cherished wife Nancy passed away in 2011, Tony was alone for 2 years. He then met Carol Fox, an old friend from the First Unitarian Church and the Saturday Night Dance Club, who’d lost her husband. Carol became his companion for the next 10 years, and they both enjoyed a second love story, continuing to travel and attend orchestra concerts.

Grandpa Tony, otherwise known as “Grumpy” doted on his four grandchildren. He travelled to Wheaton and Seattle to have skipping races, watch soccer games, attend dance and piano recitals, arm wrestle, build bridges from straws, and generally spoil his grandkids.

Tony Saada had a long life well lived, died without regrets, and was loved by his family. He will be missed.

The family prefers that those who wish may make contributions in his name to The Cleveland Orchestra (www.clevelandorchestra.com/donate).

A service in celebration of Dr. Saada’s life (followed by a luncheon) will be held at 11am on Saturday, November 15 at Brown-Forward, 17022 Chagrin Blvd, Shaker Hts., OH.

FRIENDS MAY CALL AT BROWN-FORWARD ONE HOUR BEFORE THE SERVICE.

Private interment, Lake View Cemetery.