The Seven Schools

Adnan Kassar School of Business

Ranking again as No. 1 in Business and Economics nationally, the Adnan Kassar School of Business (AKSOB) continues to excel in its research output and quality, and the high caliber of its faculty.

For the third year running, the Adnan Kassar School of Business (AKSOB)  maintained its position as a national leader in Business and Economics according to the 2023 Times Higher Education (THE) Subject Ranking. Notably, it improved by one bracket compared to last year, reaching the top 251-300 rank.

The school also scored highest in the Arab World and 42nd globally - up from 76 in 2022 to 91 in 2023 - on Citations, one of the five ranking criteria used by THE, reflecting the university’s impact and influence in the field on an international scale.

These outstanding results confirm the school’s distinction across its different programs, which fall under the subject ranking in business and economics.

During the first faculty meeting in AY 2021-2022, the Excellence in Research Award and the Excellence in Teaching Award respectively went to Assistant Professor of Marketing Omar Itani and Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Information Technology and Operations Management Department Manal Yunis.

A team of students from the Vertically Integrated Program led by Assistant Professor IT & Operations Management Department Joelle Nader won the International 2022 VIP Consortium Innovation Competition for their submission: A Lean Approach to Designing Sustainable Value Chains in Food, Pharmaceutical and Chemical Industries. The project, which combines several multidisciplinary approaches, promotes the implementation of lean and green practices in wineries and was found to meet most of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

A course designed by associate professor of operations management Jordan Srour gave students the opportunity to collaborate with their peers from Boise State University to come up with innovative solutions to real-time problems, targeting the SDGs.  The exchange program between the two universities was funded by the US Embassy in Lebanon.

In January 2022, Dr. Srour was appointed as Assistant Provost for Educational Resources and Innovation tasked with directing and advancing the LAU Libraries and the Center for Innovative Learning in addition to supporting other strategic educational priorities and initiatives.

Following the successful launch of the online MBA in Global Business Administration, AKSOB introduced the online MBA in Business Analytics to help students qualify for higher levels of management positions and enhance data-driven decision-making. The coordinator for both programs is Associate Professor Abdul-Nasser El-Kassar, an associate professor in the Department of Information Technology & Operations Management.

A paper co-authored by Associate Professor of Marketing Zahy Ramadan, and said to “contribute a seminal work in the field of virtual influencers,” has been featured in Forbes Middle East. The study - published by Marketing Intelligence & Planning - defines the key components of a computer-generated influencer’s (CGI) identity and analyzes the ensuing relationship between the CGI and its digital environment.

A study on corporate environmental ethics co-authored by Assistant Professor of Marketing Omar Itani has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, one of the 50 journals used in the Financial Times research rank. The paper shows that employee brand advocacy and customer satisfaction are increased when firms activate their corporate environmental ethics through eco-capabilities, as environmental stewards find more meaning in their work.

After two years of strict health measures, laughter and music returned to the LAU Beirut campus on the evening that around 80 hospitality and tourism management senior students hosted the Live It, Love It, Lebanon Will Rise Again event, with the help of their faculty mentors and more than 50 sponsors.

Health Sciences Schools

Alice Ramez Chagoury School of Nursing

LAU nurses continue to advocate for their wide-ranging profession.

In February, the school signed an agreement with UK-Med to provide training on health emergency preparedness for medical and paramedical students, and to foster research in this area. Given Lebanon’s ongoing, multilayered economic, social and health crises, such a collaboration bolsters the university’s capacity to build an effective humanitarian response to a large-scale emergency and deliver aid to the country’s most vulnerable.

Nursing student Charbel El Kosseify has held the presidency of the First Responders Club since fall 2020, which consists of 12 medics who are either in the Civil Defense or the Lebanese Red Cross or trained by the Responders Club members in the office, and 47 dispatchers, handling a turnover of six patients per day. Dr. Maha Habre is the advisor of the Club. The team has been recognized as an independent entity called the Emergency Response Unit, with 10 students hired to assist in the running and monitoring of all the work done.

Dr. Rita Doumit along with her colleagues from the psychology program at LAU designed a youth-led evidence-based intervention program that offers emotional intelligence training for Lebanese adolescents in public schools and addresses the lack of youth-friendly mental health services in the country. Their efforts culminated in a $185,000 grant from Grand Challenges Canada, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

Following a three-year hiatus due to health restrictions, ARCSON honored the classes of 2020, 2021 and 2022 at the pinning ceremony. They were urged to “reimagine, transform and disrupt the ways nurses lead and impact society.”

Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine

The year was marked by sharing medical expertise, and connections with the global medical community and honoring the medical students whose education was a baptism by fire throughout health crises and emergencies.

A founding member of the school back in 2008, Dr. Sola Aoun Bahous was appointed dean of the Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine in April 2022.

In collaboration with the online journal of the medical humanities, Hektoen International, the School of Medicine announced the winners of a groundbreaking essay competition, which aimed to expand humanities in the medical curriculum.

Soon after the rise of Monkeypox cases worldwide, Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine and Clinical Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases Jacques Mokhbat distilled available scientific facts on the disease and dismissed its likelihood of becoming another pandemic.

In June, 65 medical students donned the white coat, marking their transition from pre-clinical learning to the clinical wards at the annual White Coat Ceremony. At the event, Dr. Mawad exhorted them to stay humble, as “humility, humanity and self-exertion are three qualities you should never part company with.”

Honoring the “generation that stepped up to serve,” the School of Medicine recognized its 10th graduating class, seventh group of residents and third group of graduating fellows, whose journeys have been a baptism by fire in the face of health emergencies and crises in Lebanon.

School of Pharmacy

Faculty, student and alumni take the helm in advocating for their profession and make strides in serving the larger community beyond pharmacy practice.

In November, the school celebrated two classes of 129 pharmacists at the annual White Coat Ceremony which was not held the year before due to health restrictions. Delivering a message of hope, Dean Imad Btaiche encouraged the students to keep fighting, “as we as faculty are empowered by your presence.”

The Lebanese Order of Pharmacists elected four alumni of the school to its board: Joe Salloum (BS ‘03) as president, and Abdul Rahman Merkbawi (BS ‘06), Fadi Hdeab (PharmD ‘99) and Faraj Saade (PharmD ‘04) as members.

The School of Pharmacy joined forces with a consortium of local and European institutions in a capacity-building three-year project that aims to promote safe hospital wastewater management in Lebanon. A team of faculty and students took part in training on European best practices and innovative technology that is being used in wastewater treatment. They also visited local hospitals and wastewater treatment plants in Spain.

During the Spring semester, Clinical Associate Professor of Pharmacy Ghada El Khoury engaged her students in the Special Topic Pharmacy Immunization course by tasking them with producing educational videos to address vaccine hesitancy. The novel teaching method reinforced the students’ knowledge and bolstered their soft skills.

In May, applicants to LAU joined the Pharmacy Open Day and got an up-close experience of what a typical day on campus is like. They interacted with LAU students, residents, faculty, and staff, explored the spaces where they will grow including classrooms, faculty offices, labs, libraries, student lounge, and learned about potential career paths.

Four of the school’s residents presented prospective interventional studies as well as retrospective research of interest to the healthcare community in Lebanon and globally at the Joint Annual Residency Conference 2022 - a collaboration between the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) accredited pharmacy residency programs in Lebanon; LAU School of Pharmacy/LAU Medical Center-Rizk Hospital and the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUMBC).

At the annual School of Pharmacy Hooding and Graduation of Residents, 29 new PharmD graduates and two postgraduate residents pledged to support the uplifting of the Lebanese health sector.

School of Architecture and Design

AY2021-2022 marked the School of Architecture and Design’s (SArD) move into the newly completed Gezairi Building, a sustainable spacious structure that boasts state-of-the-art facilities and aligns with the expansion of the university’s academic programs.

A milestone for the School of Architecture and Design in AY2021-2022 was its relocation to the new Gezairi Building in January 2022. The renovations to Gezairi that started in 2012 were completed under challenging circumstances.

The building now expands the Beirut campus with an additional built-up area of 4, 500 square meters. With this building, LAU adds another sustainable facility with Excellence for Design and Greater Efficiencies (EDGE) certification for 20 percent in Energy Savings, 30 percent in Water Savings, 26 percent Less Embodied Energy in Materials.

SArD students’ learning experience will be enhanced in this new facility and its state-of-the-art foundation studios, fine arts laboratories, fashion design studios, graphic design, architecture and interior design studios in addition to institutes and offices.

The school’s expansion was also marked by the addition of 17 new faculty members, who will be enriching the students’ experience across the board.

At the beginning of AY2021-2022, at the instigation of Adjunct Faculty Joumana Ibrahim, who consistently encourages her students to enter design competitions relevant to their classwork around the world, graphic design students Rita Azar, Charline El Helou and Maya Jurdak were selected to take part in internationally renowned exhibitions in Egypt, La Paz, and the Ban Ki-moon Centre’s virtual exhibition.

In August 2021, the summer workshop course in Furniture Design with instructor Vanessa Dammous culminated in a first-prize win for second-year architecture student Carina Joseph at Atelier Mobile’s En Plein Air Competition. Joseph’s design, Becoming One, consisted of two elements that create a seat using integrated wooden joinery. Graduates Soumar Al Kamand and Rachelle Saliba also received an honorable mention for their transformable multifunctional frame.

The following month, only two years after graduating from LAU, renowned Designer Emma Boutros (BS ‘08) and founder of Poise Design footwear brand, was featured on the Forbes’ 40 Women Behind Middle Eastern Brands 2021 list.

In mid-November, SArD students and alumni had the opportunity to exhibit bespoke artworks alongside established artists for a worthy cause. The invitation to create design products of the first aid kit that would be exhibited and auctioned in support of the Lebanese Civil Defense came from a Lebanese nonprofit organization, Roads for Life. Faculty members Karma Dabaghi and Vanessa Dammous mentored and coached the groups of LAU students through the weeks leading up to the exhibition.

While all the students’ pieces were exhibited at Tanit Gallery, A Pillow for Life - created by Noor Tabet (BArch ‘18) and senior student Youssef El Hadi was selected for the online silent auction by the judging committee.

Future students were invited to experience a typical day in the life of an LAU architecture, art or design student, while being mentored by LAU’s foundation program faculty, during the Architecture, Art, and Design Open Day in April 2022, organized by Assistant Professor Lee Frederix. https://news.lau.edu.lb/2022/lau-seeks-and-rewards-creative-high-schoolers-with-scholarships.php

In May 2022, the school hosted a three-day marathon workshop during which fashion design students were trained on eco-innovative designs. The event formalized a partnership between LAU and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Regional Office for West Asia (ROWA), and was held under the framework of the West Asia Sustainable Fashion Academy.

Amid the economic crisis in Lebanon, the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University generously offered six fully paid scholarships for LAU architecture students covering the spring 2022 semester.

In June 2022, the sixth cohort of fashion designers put on an eclectic show, titled Ignite, that combined craftsmanship, innovation and vision. This was the first live fashion show since the outbreak of the pandemic and the first to be held in the Gezairi Building.

Also in June 2022, the school hosted the Bio-Fashion Factory exhibition showcasing a series of research conducted by LAU’s first BioDesign in Fashion course in collaboration with Vancouver-based innovations lab Temporal Futures.

Rounding off a journey that was marked by the sudden shift to online learning, 12 graphic design seniors aptly named their annual exhibit “*22 Bit” in reference to the most basic unit of information in digital communications, showcasing their work and aptitude to produce innovative, socially responsible designs with the latest technology.

In August 2022, Dr. Maroun Daccache, chair of the Department of Architecture & Interior Design presented his project on the redesign of Beirut port following the tragic explosion of August 4 at the Order of Engineers and Architects. The project, which highlighted the possible extension of the port in the city, was featured in the An-Nahar newspaper.

Founder of Atelier L’inconnu and LAU alumnus Fadi Yachoui (BArch ‘13) exhibited his furniture collection, Cacti, at Milan’s Salone del Mobile last June, where it was selected among the highlights of the exhibit. Yachoui had also won the international MM Award gold prize in the interior design category in 2021 for the project PH-13 Beirut.

Fashion design alumna and winner of the Prix du Jury 2021 Nour Takieddine (BFA ‘21) was among six students selected to present their creations to Donatella Versace.

AY 2021-2022 has been a busy year for the school with several symposia, webinars and workshops moving from online to in-person delivery. Some international speakers and local experts in their fields, and topics ranging from the use of AI in architecture to the history of Arab graphic design.

School of Arts and Sciences

The School of Arts and Sciences (SoAS) thrives with its new Department of Liberal Education, timely research and publications, partnerships and promotion of the liberal arts.

In AY2021-2022, the School of Arts and Sciences implemented its new structure that merged the departments of Communication Arts, English, History and Humanities into the Department of Communication, Arts and Languages, and the departments Social Sciences and Education into the Department of Social and Education Sciences. It also introduced the new Department of Liberal Education, which services the entire LAU community. The restructure aims to ensure multidisciplinary pedagogy through liberal education and to empower the arts programs while maintaining a steady growth of the sciences programs.

In addition to launching an online Master in Applied Artificial Intelligence in collaboration with Wiley, the school initiated an online Master in Education which it hopes to launch in 2022-2023.

Under the direction of Assistant Professor of Migration Studies Jasmin Lilian Diab, the school’s Institute of Migration Studies has been instrumental in advancing knowledge on all aspects of displacement, from refugee laws, gender within the migration space, humanitarian concerns and others through vigorous research, a series of policy and working papers, reports, webinars series and a host of events. It has also partnership programs with the UNHCR, the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, and the Center for Immigrant Refugee and Global Health at the City University of New York.

The Institute’s “Borders and Limitations” blog, which was launched in December 2021, has served as a platform that publishes content from scholars, practitioners, policymakers, researchers and students on pressing and ongoing intersections in the migration and forced migration discourses. Edited by Dr. Diab, the blog is supported by a team of assistant and guest editors who are all current or former LAU faculty members, or exceptional members of the IMS research team.

As part of its social engagement and outreach activities that aim to inform Grade 11 students about education opportunities during a week of university-level courses offered in subjects of their interest, the school held the ninth edition of its summer camps online in August 2021.

As Dr. Tokajian’s lab has also served as a reference for the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in confirming circulating variants in the country, the sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 genomes at LAU later identified the Omicron variant in two suspected cases in Lebanon based on samples sent by the MoPH.
Following a WHO grant secured by Dr. Tokajian, her team also trained two researchers from the Ministry of Public Health on SARS-CoV-2 sequencing and data analysis at the pathogenomics Lab, with similar training offered to 30 LAU senior biology students. 

The school continues to host grants from Carnegie, NIH, the Danish Institute and the Arab Council for Social Sciences (ACSS).

Also in November, the Department of Social and Education Sciences and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Portugal launched the two-year Teacher Professional Development Program for Armenian schools in Lebanon during a hybrid ceremony. The program serves to help the schools incorporate innovative teaching and develop methods that facilitate the acquisition of the language.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Elias Akoury led a research group of undergraduates on an exploratory field trip to the Palm Islands Natural Reserve in North Lebanon to investigate and mitigate microplastic contamination in seawater. After collecting and analyzing water, sediments, soil and vegetal samples, the team was tasked with developing innovative and focused mitigation strategies to be demonstrated in the laboratory and subsequently scaled up and evaluated for implementation.

After a career spanning 31 years, Associate Professor of Dance Nadra Assaf was honored for the impact her work has made on the performing arts in Lebanon and the region. Under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, Dr. Assaf received a lifetime achievement award in December 2021 during a ceremony organized by ‘Ard el Mobdeen Institute and Centre Tammouz. Dr. Assaf spearheaded the International Dance Day Festival in Lebanon which has been hosted annually at LAU.

In December 2021, alumnus and filmmaker Karim Kassem (BA ‘12) won the Best Film Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam for his docufiction film Octopus. Kassem chose to make the film about the aftermath of the August 4 Beirut explosion a silent one for, at that point, he said, “One can arguably say everything without saying anything.”

On the first anniversary of the August, 4, 2020 explosion at the Port of Beirut, SoAS faculty members launched the Write to Remember Project, an outreach initiative, targeting youth between ages 16 and 22 who were impacted by the blast. The project was made possible thanks to a $10,000 grant from the US Embassy, based on a proposal submitted by Senior Instructor of English Paula Habre and Instructor of English Hala Daouk along with Haigazian University colleagues - former LAU faculty and Writing Center tutors - Anita Moutchoyan and Serine Jaafar. 

Subsequently, In August 2022, a closing ceremony marking the successful completion of the project was held at the US Embassy in Beirut, in the presence of Ambassador Dorothy C. Shea

For six weeks this spring, five LAU performing arts students had the golden opportunity to workshop and stage performances of Associate Professor of Theater Lina Abyad’s play Amrika with NYU Tisch School of the Arts, widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the world. The play was performed five times April 22-30 as part of Tisch Drama Stage’s Festival of Voices, curated by NYU professor Catherine Coray, featuring productions by Arab and Arab-American playwrights performed by undergraduate students.

The play was made possible by the support it received from generous donors, namely Nour Theater, Mr. and Mrs. Raff and Loretta Ellis, Mr. Carlos Abou Jaoude, Association Philippe Jabre, Drs. Mahmud and Lina Kreidie, as well as The President’s Fund.

In May, the school kicked off the second edition of its signature Undergraduate Research and Discovery (URaD) program with 55 new enthusiastic junior students from various disciplines. The competitive one-year program was created to allow its students from all majors to conduct research and/or artistic projects under the direct supervision of a faculty mentor, without the pressure of failing their courses.

In June, LAU’s Institute of Media Research and Training (IMRT) at SoAS held its eighth edition of the Media Digital Literacy Academy of Beirut (MDLAB), in a week-long session on empowering women and youth through media literacy pedagogies and multimedia skills. The lectures were given by LAU faculty along with guest speakers and experts from the United States, Canada, Egypt, Iraq, Germany and Denmark. Daily workshops were organized in collaboration with the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, The Arab Council for Social Sciences, Switch Perspective, NO2TA feminist lab, Iraq Network for Social Media, Digital Lab and Egab media platform, among others.

On 26-28 June, in collaboration with LAU’s Arab Institute for Women, the Department of Social and Education Science organized an international conference titled Women, Religion and Human Rights to promote the work of ADYAN foundation and the Danish Embassy’s Danmission.

For a decade, the LAU Annual Creative Writing Competition (CWC) launched by the Department of English, currently subsumed by the Department of Communication, Arts and Languages, has provided a platform for all LAU students to express themselves freely. In June 2022, the department celebrated the 10th anniversary of its flagship Creative Writing Competition, informed by the newly revamped Creative Writing curriculum.

A fireside chat with the deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon about the country’s financial and socioeconomic meltdown and negotiations with the IMF was attended by a large number of local citizens, representatives from three embassies as well as online audiences. As a positive outcome of this event, an opening emerged for LAU, particularly the Institute of Social Justice and Conflict Resolution and the AiW, to help organize an expert task force that would have first access to the government’s recovery plan and share their expert feedback and recommendations on how to strengthen its inclusivity, sustainability, and efficacy.

Following the establishment of the XR laboratory in 2021, SoAS initiated several projects that support research and student development.

The XR laboratory facility houses high-tech workstations (equipped with gaming graphics cards), virtual reality headsets, mixed reality headsets (to interact with digital objects in the real world), 3D scanners and 3D 360-cameras.

Under the stewardship of the Dean’s Office and SoAS faculty, a technically skilled team of students from various disciplines including computer science, computer engineering, mechatronics, architecture and medicine was trained. Upon induction into the lab, students are guided to enhance their skillset on several XR related tools such as C#, Python, Java, Unity, StereoKit, Web RTC, Blender, .NET, Adobe After Effects and/or Revit. The team’s diversity ensures that the facility covers the needed skillset to explore projects in various fields by forming coherent multidisciplinary teams.

The facility has embarked on several projects that include the delivery of XR workshops and developing bespoke applications to support the teaching of hard sciences.  

School of Engineering

Partnerships and sustainable development initiatives continue to dominate a busy year for the School of Engineering (SOE), as its faculty and students shine locally, regionally and internationally.

In November, Petroleum engineering students claimed first place at the university program competition of the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC). This was the second time that members of the LAU Student Chapter of the Society of Petroleum Engineers snatched the title, outdoing participants from across the region. They also received the 2022 Student Chapter Excellence Award for the third year in a row, in recognition of their technical dissemination, professional development, member engagement and service to the community.

A proposal submitted by the SOE to the USAID-Trade Investment Facilitation (TIF) project to establish a pilot for local manufacturing, assembly and quality testing of solar modules in Lebanon has moved to the co-creation phase with industry partners. USAID considered the proposal one of the most impactful for Lebanon, considering the dire need to explore more sustainable energy sources. Six months later, the third phase of the project - training and workforce development - was formalized in a Memorandum of Understanding signing between LAU and the USAID-funded TIF project.

In February, more than 135 university students from across Lebanon flocked to LAU to take part in a Machine Learning Bootcamp organized by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, in collaboration with the Logistics Automation and Artificial Intelligence student clubs.

In March, Lebanon received an invaluable donation from the Geneva-based European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN): a high-performance supercomputer. A consortium of five universities - LAU, the American University of Beirut, Saint Joseph University, the Beirut Arab University and the Lebanese University - were charged with its governance and maintenance. Having played a key role in its setup and system administration, LAU students and faculty are set to tremendously benefit, especially in terms of added computing resources and enhanced research output.

In the same month, UNDP Regional Goodwill Ambassador Michael Haddad embarked on an Arctic Walk, with the aid of a specially designed exoskeleton devised by a scientific team of engineers and neurologists from LAU and the American University of Beirut. He delivered a “Package of Hope” that contains seed packets from 12 Arab countries and a symbolic seed - a limited edition book by Pope Francis - to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, where the world’s unique crop collections are stored to safeguard genetic diversity.

In July, a team of three engineering students - Georgio El Khoury, Nour Mikhael and Kevin Aoun - pitched a carpooling platform that addresses Lebanon’s environmental and economic crises to the Google Solution Challenge 2022 MENA, and won first place.