AUB: Khuri Appoints Alan Shihadeh as the New Dean of the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture

President of the American University of Beirut (AUB), Dr. Fadlo R. Khuri, announced the appointment of Dr. Alan Shihadeh as Dean of the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture (SFEA). 

“Dr. Shihadeh has served as Interim Dean during the 2016-17 academic year and succeeds Dr. Makram Suidan. He has built consensus for an inspiring vision of a Faculty whose primary concern is human well-being, broadly construed, which was elemental in securing the largest gift in AUB’s history from the late alumnus Maroun Semaan,” Khuri said.

“Dr. Shihadeh earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and his doctorate in sciences in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the field of combustion in 1998. He taught at Birzeit University before joining AUB as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering.  Soon after, with a $5,000 AUB grant and a borrowed corner of the Core Environment Lab, he conducted a systematic study of emissions from waterpipe tobacco smoking, the first in a series of ground-breaking studies on the chemistry, human behavior, and health effects of the practice. Evidence produced by the AUB Aerosol Research Laboratory (ARL), as it became known, led the World Health Organization (WHO) to issue its first International Advisory warning in 2005, compelling regional and international governments to include waterpipes in tobacco control efforts. The ARL is now also a leading center for the study of electronic cigarettes and other products.  Reversing the usual flow of technology, it develops and exports scientific instruments to research laboratories in North America and Europe, as well as the Middle East.”

He continued: “Alan has authored or co-authored more than 100 refereed journal publications, reports, and conference abstracts that are primarily concerned with the chemistry, physics, and exposure science of particle pollutants. His teams have been sponsored by the top US and Lebanese research organizations including the largest grant on record at AUB.”  

“Dr. Shihadeh serves as an advisor to the FDA, a scientific expert to the WHO, and a Project Director and Executive Leadership Committee member of the Center for the Study of Tobacco Products at Virginia Commonwealth University.  He is a member of the Air Quality Research Unit, the AUB-Saint Joseph University collaboration, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the American Chemical Society’s Chemical Research in Toxicology journal. He co-directs the Collaborative for Inhaled and Atmospheric Aerosols and the Tobacco Control Research Group at AUB. He also sits on the Tobacco-Free AUB 2018 Task Force which is carrying out our mandate to end smoking on university property next year.”

President Khuri highlighted that the search committee for the Dean of SFEA, which was co-led by Trustee Emeritus Dr. James Wei and Provost Mohamed Harajli, fielded an extraordinarily high quality of candidates.  The engagement of trustees, alumni and members of the Maroun Semaan Foundation in resourcing this search and raising its profile internationally was remarkable. Dr. Shihadeh was selected for his vision, his energy, his accomplishments, but also his deeply ingrained passion and conscience to make a difference for our students, faculty, staff, and for the world at large.   In the final analysis, we are fortunate to have selected and signed a visionary dean for this essential and remarkably accomplished Faculty.

Khuri concluded by asking the AUB community to congratulate the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture and Dean Shihadeh himself on this momentous appointment.