New Assistant Professor Hiam Khoury joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in mid-September. Khoury expressed her pleasure at being part of a “competitive” institution that strives for excellence.

Khoury realized she wanted to be an engineer from a young age. “My father is my idol. He is a civil engineer who graduated from the University of San Francisco,” said Khoury. Like father like daughter, Khoury earned her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the Lebanese American University, Byblos, in 2004, before going to Ann Arbor to get her MS, 2005, and her PhD in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Michigan. Her major focus is on construction engineering and management.

As a graduate student Khoury gave instruction in construction contracting and served as a teaching assistant and grader for other courses in her department. She is currently giving a course, Introduction to Information Technology, to first year AUB students, and she finds their “willingness to learn obvious from their commendable attitude.” Khoury will also be helping with the curriculum for a new course towards a BS in construction engineering. “Work towards a PhD program will hopefully follow. To be part of this progression for Lebanon has been on my mission statement for my own PhD,” said Khoury.

Having interned with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory in the summers 2007-08, Khoury’s professional (industrial) experience was “shaped.” She is the recipient of several awards, including a pre-doctoral award from the Association for Women in Science in 2008.

Khoury’s research interests revolve around innovative information technologies and their applications in construction engineering, project management, and other engineering fields, including application of simulation and visualization tools for construction planning and scheduling, as well as location-aware/positioning technologies for information support on construction sites.  

When not involved in technical work, Khoury engages in one of her many hobbies: basketball, aerobics, and many outdoor activities such as hunting, hiking, and rafting. She has taken classes in Latin dancing and Spanish, and her favorite leisure activities include reading, entertaining material on the internet, learning words in foreign languages, listening to Latin and French songs, and playing the piano.