Victor Araman is a Professor of Decision Science at the Olayan School of Business (OSB), at AUB where he currently serves as the Associate Dean for programs. He was formerly a full-time faculty at the Stern school of Business, NYU. He is still affiliated with NYU as an adjunct professor. He was also a visiting interests are broadly on stochastic modeling and control, focusing on operations and pricing analytics issues. Including, queueing systems, dynamic pricing, machine learning and experimentation. Professor Araman has published in leading academic journals including Annals of Applied Probability, Management Science, Operations Research and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. His work on Media Revenue Management was awarded the 2012 M&SOM Best Paper Award. He currently serves on the editorial boards of M&SOM, NRL (Naval Research Logistics) and Queueing Systems. He teaches courses on operations management, supply chain management, decision models and pricing and revenue optimization in the full-time MBA, Executive MBA and undergraduate programs. He received the AUB university-wide Teaching Excellence Award in 2014.
Professor Araman has an intensive professional experience. He previously worked with Altera Corporation in San Jose, California and McKinsey & Company in Paris. He has consulted and advised many companies in the Silicon Valley area and in the Euro-MENA region. He has been involved with and advising few startups including a social enterprise in Africa and the UK-based Slidr.com - a retail technology platform - where he designed and lead the development of an innovative dynamic pricing algorithm. Slidr won the 1st place at the 2018 Accenture Innovation Award GITEX week (Fintech category). Victor holds an engineering degree from Ecole Centrale in France and an M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Operations Research from Stanford University.
- Mariette Awad, PhD,
WiDS@AUB ambassador, Director of the AI Data Science and Computing Hub,
Associate Professor of Machine Learning, MSFEA
Prof. Mariette Awad is an associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the American University of Beirut. She received her PhD in electrical engineering in 2007 and she has been a visiting professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, Intel Mobile Group, and MIT. She was invited by CVC labs, Google and Qualcomm to present her work on machine learning and image processing. She has published a book “ Efficient Machine Learning” in 2015 as well as in numerous conferences and journals and is managing few grants. Prior to her academic position, she was with IBM System and Technology group in Vermont as a wireless product engineer where she earned management recognition, several business awards, and multiple patents. Her current research interests include machine learning, data analytics and internet of things. She can be reached at mariette.awad@aub.edu.lb
- Sana El Hajj
Lecturer, Finance
Founding member & Executive, the Lebanese Private Sector
Suliman S. Olayan School of Business
American University of Beirut
Sana has been an instructor at the Olayan School of Business (OSB), American University of Beirut, since 2006. Over the course of a 20-year career, which began at the Lebanese American University in 2001, Sana has acquired extensive experience teaching Accounting, Finance and related subjects, with a current undergraduate curriculum covering Corporate Finance and Financial Accounting. Her contributions to practice include extensive research of various Lebanese SMEs and case studies “The Diet Center: The SAP ERP DECISION” and “MALIKs: FRANCHISING THE BRAND”, published with IVEY PUBLISHING in 2018 and 2020 respectively. The former is listed in the Harvard Publishing Review Store and Harvard Business Education Publishing. She is also a member of OSB’s “Case HUB” that promotes case writing and teaching.
Sana’s background is in the banking industry, as a Credit Analyst at BLOM Bank (London) and a Eurobond Trader at SAMBA (London). She also attended the Associate Development Program at Citicorp Investment Bank (London). Starting in 2001, Sana shifted her attention to the private sector.
In addition to her academic career, Sana has a wide experience as a consultant, advising in optimal business processes, budgeting, financial forecasting, implementation, and monitoring of internal controls, and conducts professional workshops and seminars.
Sana is a Founding member of the Lebanese Private Sector (LPSN ) and member of its executive committee.
She is also a member of the BOD of Wake, a non-profit organization and a cultural and educational center that strives to enforce a culture of dialogue and acceptance of religious diversity among the Lebanese. Sana holds a BA in Economics from AUB and an MBA from LAU.
- Ghada El-Hajj Fuleihan, MD, MPH, FRCP
Professor of Medicine, Founding Director of Calcium Metabolism and Osteoporosis Program, and WHO Collaborating Center for Metabolic Bone Disorders Scholars in Health Research Program at American University of Beirut, Lebanon, Bernard Lown Scholar, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA
Dr. Ghada El-Hajj Fuleihan is Professor of Medicine, Physician-Scientist, at the American University of Beirut (AUB), Beirut, Lebanon. She is founding Director of the Calcium Metabolism and Osteoporosis Program, WHO Collaborating Center for Metabolic Bone Disorders, and of the Scholars in HeAlth Research Program at AUB. Dr. El-Hajj Fuleihan obtained her MD degree from the American University of Beirut (AUB), completed residency and fellowship training at the New England Deaconess and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston. She holds a master in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health, Clinical Effectiveness concentration. She is the PI/PD on multiple investigator initiated grants, including the NIH D43 capacity-building grant, awarded a 5-year competitive renewal (2020-2025). Dr. El-Hajj Fuleihan’s laboratory focuses on generating evidence on the pathophysiology, prevention, and treatment of hypovitaminosis D, osteoporosis, and other metabolic bone disorders. She leads a team that conducts clinical trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses, and translates findings into prevention and treatment strategies. She closely collaborates with the Ministry of Health officials and international experts to generate evidence-based national and international care pathways. These include guidance and guidelines on metabolic bone diseases, by OSTEOS, ISCD, IOF, ASBMR and the Endocrine Society. She led the IOF Middle East Africa audit, launched FRAX Lebanon, the first fracture risk calculator in the Middle East. She has mentored over 64 postgraduate trainees and junior faculty; several are pursuing careers in clinical translational research, at AUB, or in the US.
Fida is currently Wharton Executive Education online program’s Director for Design and Delivery Operations. She formerly served as the AUB Olayan School of Business Director of Executive Education. Fida’s career has been focused on leading high impact programs that accelerate business outcomes. She led the development and delivery of high-impact, innovative program in both the custom and open enrollment spaces leveraging bisynchronous and blended formats. She is a Jury member of EFMD’s Excellence in Practice yearly award. She also co-founded AUB Stanford WiDS and co-led its planning and execution during its first two inaugural years. Fida holds an MBA from George Washington University and a BS in Computer Science from the American University of Beirut.
- Lama Moussawi, PhD
WiDS @AUB ambassador
Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development
Interim Director, Master of Science in Business Analytics
Director, Center for Inclusive Business and Leadership for Women
Associate Professor of Management Science
Suliman S. Olayan School of Business
Dr. Lama Moussawi is an Associate Professor at the American University of Beirut, conducting research and teaching in the field of Management Science. Dr. Moussawi graduated with a BS in Computer Science from the American University of Beirut, and has an MBA, Master in Supply Chain Management, and a PhD degree in Management Science from the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Moussawi is actively involved in promoting and supporting women in the field of Data Science. She is the founder and Chair of the Women in Data Science conference at AUB, and the founding chair of the AUB Committee on the Lives and Careers of Women at AUB. She is also a co-PI of a $1.5 million funded research project to develop an index on the status of women in the formal economies in the Arab MENA region. She is actively engaged in issues related to women in operations research at the WORMS (Women in Operations Research and Management Science) meetings at the annual international INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Science) conference, as well as the WIEA (Women in Industrial Engineering US-Turkey) workshops. Furthermore, Dr. Moussawi played a key role in developing a Master program in Business Analytics in the Olayan School of Business at AUB. Dr. Moussawi is thrilled to be a WiDS Ambassador, and to host the WiDS conference for the third time at AUB and sees it as a great opportunity to inspire young girls to join the field by showcasing global female leaders in Data Science, and educate the community of students, faculty, and business practitioners about the latest developments in the field.
- Fatima Mroue, PhD
Lecturer, Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences,
American University of Beirut
Fatima Mroue got her Ph.D. from the Lebanese University and l’École Centrale de Nantes in 2019. She is a Lecturer of Mathematics and a fellow of the Center of Advanced Mathematical Sciences at the American University of Beirut. She works on the analysis of partial differential equations as well as on the design and analysis of numerical methods for these equations. Her areas of interest include biomedical applications such as cardiac electrophysiology, cardiac electro-mechanics, epidemiology, and microbiology. In her work, she is involved in deriving realistic models for biological phenomena.
- Sara Nejm, PHD
WiDS @AUB ambassador
Associate Director, AI Data Science and Computing Hub
Assistant Professor of Physics, Department of Physics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
American University of Beirut
Sara Najem is the Associate Director for computational sciences at the Hub for Artificial
Intelligence Data Science and Computing at AUB. Prior to joining AUB, Dr. Najem was a researcher at the National Center for Remote Sensing of the Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS-L) studying city-scale out-of- equilibrium processes like forced refugee migration and investigating the relationship between urban morphology and energy. Since joining the Department of Physics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as an assistant professor, she has been teaching computational physics highlighting its relevance to various fields of interest, from thin films to out-of-equilibrium physics and discrete gravity. Dr. Najem is currently the graduate advisor for the Graduate Program for Computational Sciences (GPCS), guiding students to a variety of relevant problems across fields and faculties/schools including hydrogeology, epidemiology, and operations research. Her own research focuses on statistical physics and complexity science applied to living systems and urban environments. She is also a fellow at the Center for Advanced Mathematical Science.