American University of Beirut

Meet the Dean

​Alan Shihadeh, Dean of Engineering & Architecture


Alan Shihadeh​ is Professor and Dean of the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He is leading major initiatives focused on digitizing learning, re-integrating human-centered design in STEM, broadening access to education, building partnerships to support the competitiveness and sustainability of the enterprises in Lebanon and surrounding countries, and leveraging the special contexts the Arab region to pursue novel research programs that help bring about a more viable, livable, and equitable world.

Shihadeh is also founding director of the Aerosol Research Laboratory at the AUB and has authored or co-authored more than 130 peer reviewed publications on the chemistry, physics, and exposure science of particle pollutants. He has advised numerous local, national, and international government agencies on tobacco control and product regulation and contributed to shaping and building public support for Lebanon’s first comprehensive tobacco control law (Law 174). He also contributed to successful campaigns to prohibit leaded fuel and light duty roadway diesel vehicles in Lebanon. Shihadeh serves on the executive committee and as project director for the Virginia Commonwealth Center for the Study of Tobacco Products, a US Food and Drug Administration Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science. He earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering at MIT in 1998.

Author or co-author of more than 130 refereed journal publications primarily concerned with the chemistry, physics, and exposure science of particle pollutants, Shihadeh’s research has been sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the International Development Research Center (Canada). He has developed novel technologies that are used by researchers in the Middle East, Europe, and North America to study tobacco use and effects. His methods for waterpipe tobacco smoke testing have been adopted as international standards. In 2018, he and his collaborators were awarded the American Psychological Association Prize for Interdisciplinary Team Research. He is a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher and has held appointments at the University of Texas, MIT, Duke University, and the University of New Mexico.  

Shihadeh earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin and his doctorate in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the field of combustion in 1998. He taught at Birzeit University as a Fulbright fellow before joining AUB as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering in 2000. Shihadeh was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2006 and to full professor in 2012. He served as interim dean of MSFEA in 2016-17 and was appointed dean in September 2017.

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