One hundred fifty-one years after AUB built an observatory to study the stars, the university is now turning a new kind of lens toward the future, one built of “algorithms, data streams, and intelligent systems.”
The American University of Beirut has formally launched the School of Computing and Data Sciences (SCDS), the first new academic entity of this strategic scale at AUB in roughly 70 years. It is a milestone with a clear mandate to equip the region and AUB’s partners worldwide with the insight, talent, and ethical grounding to navigate a world currently being disrupted by data and machine intelligence.
“The idea of the school is rooted in AUB’s contribution to scholarship across 160 years,” says the school’s founding director, Jihad Touma, “and that history shapes both the vision and the way the school is articulated in its academic programs and its initiatives to bridge with the existing faculties.” The school, he emphasizes, is not a pivot into something unfamiliar; it is a continuation of the work AUB has already been doing, across disciplines and at scale.
The new school will anchor a flagship bachelor’s degree in data science and launch both master’s and doctoral programs in computational and data sciences, all built around rigorous foundations. Alongside those degrees, the new school will recruit a world-class, interdisciplinary faculty; aim to establish the Artificial Intelligence and Insights Institute to catalyze research, funding, and startups; open a Data Makerspace to support digitization, curation, and visualization; and expand high-performance computing through a Research Computing Center, with advanced computing infrastructure available on-premise and in the cloud, operated with robust security and governance.
The result, President Fadlo R. Khuri told the audience at the event announcing the new school, is not reactive but “a very deliberate next step” that leverages AUB’s strengths to meet real needs, “from mitigating water scarcity and health disparities to understanding the shifting dynamics of migration and labor.” The charge is to educate “wise AI leaders, thinkers, designers, and builders, who can shape technology rather than be shaped by it,” all grounded by AUB’s enduring commitment to the humanities and social sciences.
We want students who won’t just prepare for jobs in a trillion dollar sector but who will think through the profound societal implications and imagine directions others miss
What will this all look like on campus? A student might begin with an LLM-infused introduction to programming and statistical thinking, then step into a makerspace where they digitize fisheries data or curate oral histories. In a capstone project, they could partner with clinicians to model patient flows or with urbanists to forecast traffic resilience during disruptions. Graduate students might pair agent-based models of epidemics with network science to guide public health policy, or couple Mediterranean climate simulations with satellite data to inform water management.
In that sense, the School of Computing and Data Sciences is both new and familiar. It formalizes what AUB has always done at its best: bringing disciplines into conversation, building tools equal to the world’s complexity, and keeping people, students, patients, and communities at the center. As Provost Dawy put it, “the school enables AUB to adapt with agility while preserving its compass.”
We spoke with Provost Zaher Dawy and Founding Director Jihad Touma about the new school, what it means for students, research, and the region.
Q: Why is AUB launching the School of Computing and Data Sciences now, and why as a standalone school?
Provost Zaher Dawy: Our driver is simple. Keep AUB at the forefront as a research-oriented, liberal-arts institution in Lebanon and the region.
Several enablers aligned. First is the technological “evolution—revolution” that’s happening around computing, data, language models, and AI, and the implications across education, health, industry, and society. Second is building on AUB’s own rich history in the broad field of computing. Maintaining impact and advancement requires a bold move that shapes the education we offer, the students we graduate, the facilities we build, and the research we enable.
Third is responsibility. These technologies present ethical challenges with direct consequences for humanity, and AUB is the prime place in the Arab world that upholds the freedoms to ask the difficult questions and explore the unconventional answers.
That’s why we chose a state-of-the-art standalone school over a research center or scattered academic programs across different disciplines. And this did not start yesterday; Jihad and I have been working toward this goal since 2018, long before the recent wave of language models.
Professor Jihad Touma: The “why now” has two edges. One is: Are you reacting to the last two years to chase resources? The answer is a definite, and hopefully self-evident, “no.” The other is: How do you hope to contribute to a field dominated by big tech and immense global investments? Our response is to root the school in fundamentals and in AUB’s mission, not in hype cycles.
We’re positioning the university to contribute knowledge that serves our context and region, drawing on over a century-and-a-half legacy and amplifying it with machines, not to “compete” on scale but to add depth, insight, and freedom of inquiry.
Q: What kind of students do you hope to attract, both locally and internationally?
Prof. Touma: In truth, we’re already attracting them. Interest is mounting across computer science, computer engineering, business analytics, and computational programs. We want students who won’t just prepare for jobs in a trillion-dollar sector but who will think through the profound societal implications and imagine directions others miss.
We’re looking for talent attuned to our context. Students who can reflect and innovate rather than be carried away by scale or fashion.
We want philosophers of data as well as strong technologists. Our students need the humanities for a critical perspective, the social sciences for the real-world dimension, and technical mastery for genuine capability. That blend is exactly what an institution like ours can deliver.
Professor Jihad Touma