AUB@Work

What the Current Ebola Outbreak Reveals About Public Health In this episode of AUB@Work , infectious disease expert Nesrine Rizk explains why the current Ebola outbreak in central Africa is unlikely to become another COVID-like pandemic, but still carries an urgent global warning. Rizk, head of the Division of Infectious Diseases and associate professor of clinical medicine at the American Univers...

Why the Same Workout Works Differently for Different Bodies Why do some people burn more energy doing the same activity, while others seem to conserve it? In this episode of AUB at Work, sports nutrition researcher Elie-Jacques Fares explains why the same workout, diet, or supplement plan can produce very different results from one person to another. Fares, assistant professor of clinical and spor...

Episode Title: Lebanese Founders Are Turning Constraints Into a Start-Up Advantage Episode Description: Lebanon’s start-up founders face limited capital, ongoing instability, and a small domestic market. But at a New York Tech Week event cohosted by AUB’s Talal and Madiha Zein Innovation Park, known as iPark, and Impersonas, Lebanese founders and innovation leaders argued that those same pressures...

Health Questions Need Health-Specific Chatbots AI chatbots are changing how people search for health information, but when the topic is health, a confident answer is not always a safe one. In this episode of AUB@Work, Imad Elhajj, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the American University of Beirut, and Aline Germani, director of AUB’s Center for Public Health Practice, discuss wh...

What happens when a disaster hits—and the state can’t (or won’t) respond? In this episode, urban studies professor Mona Harb , co-founder of the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut , takes us inside Beirut’s post–port explosion recovery through the lens of “urban commoning” : the collective creation, repair, and shared management of urban spaces and resources outside state contro...

As a young pathologist, Riyad El-Khoury spent long days hunched over a microscope—an intense, repetitive craft where fatigue is part of the job. Today, as associate professor of pathology and head of the Muhieddine Al-Ahdab Neuromuscular Diagnostic Laboratory at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC), he’s helping push pathology into a new era: AI-assisted diagnosis. In this epis...

In this episode, we talk with Joseph Zeaiter , professor at the American University of Beirut (Baha and Walid Bassatne Department of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Energy), whose team is working to reframe tire waste as a resource. His latest research explores a practical, scalable idea: using an inexpensive mineral-based catalyst —a nickel- and cerium-doped zeolite —to dramatically increase th...

Dr. Charafeddine explains why parental mental health is not “extra”—it’s part of the care plan. Babies need nurturing caregivers to thrive, and caregivers need psychological, emotional, and social support to provide that care. While robust services like counseling, home visits, and referral pathways are often limited, costly, or inaccessible in fragile contexts, low-resource practices can still ma...

At COP30, we look to places that have lived with heat for millennia. AUB Nature Conservation Center director Yaser Abunnasr explains how Middle Eastern indigenous knowledge—embedded in architecture, agriculture, and social norms—can guide fair, practical climate action. We spotlight NCC’s Med Trails project and a “local first, scale out” model that turns evidence from communities into usable tools...

AUB’s Daniel Asmar explains MGSO, a new system that turns a single phone camera into a real-time 3D mapper. It builds dense, photorealistic maps at ~30 fps using “Gaussian splats,” enabling AR, robotics, and everyday apps without special sensors.

Environmental microbiologist Darine Salam explains why boosting native beach microbes (biostimulation) often cleans coastlines faster and with fewer side effects than chemicals or lab-engineered “superbugs.” Her team’s work shows how sampling first and dosing nutrients wisely lets nature do the heavy lifting.

After the 2020 Beirut port blast, curator-archaeologist Nadine Panayot led a tech-enabled rescue at AUB’s Archaeological Museum—digitizing archives, virtually reconstructing shattered Roman glass, and scanning sites across Lebanon. She shares how community collaboration, ethical digitization, and practical tools are building resilient heritage systems ahead of her Nov 18 talk at The Met.

On Elephantine Island—where it rains as rarely as once a decade—archaeobotanist Dr. Claire Malleson uses exquisitely preserved seeds, pods, and plant fragments to piece together how ordinary Egyptians lived during the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2000–1600 BCE). When the sheer volume of data outgrew traditional methods, a serendipitous book-club meeting with Dr. Jordan Srour led to a machine-learning partn...

AUB’s Dr. Antoine Abou Fayad takes us from Lebanese fields to the lab bench to explain how his team uncovered four antibiotic-producing Streptomyces strains—three likely brand-new to science—and why those “earthy-smell” microbes could help counter the global rise of drug-resistant infections. We talk soil sleuthing, biosynthetic gene clusters, and the long road from natural product to bedside.

A tiny sticker on a stop sign can fool an autonomous vehicle’s vision—no laptop needed. Professor Ali Chehab (American University of Beirut) explains a new “seatbelt for perception”: a model-agnostic defense that rides alongside existing self-driving software to catch adversarial tricks on road signs and lane markers in real time.

Lebanon’s reliance on ~35,000 diesel generators—8–10k in Beirut alone—may be fueling one of the world’s highest bladder cancer rates. Dr. Hassan Dhaini (AUB Faculty of Health Sciences) explains his team’s multi-phase research on quasi-ultrafine particulates from generators, what those particles carry (carcinogens, heavy metals, mutagens), how they travel through the body, and why a known genetic s...

Air date: September 10, 2025 Guest: Simon Neaime, Professor of Economics, American University of Beirut (AUB) Episode Summary Across parts of the Middle East, daily life often unfolds as if the state is absent—traffic laws ignored, unreliable public services, and electricity rationed. In this episode, economist Simon Neaime explains why these symptoms point to a deeper crisis: a collapse in trust....

Release date: September 10, 2025 Guest: Prof. Elsa Maalouf , Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering & Architecture, American University of Beirut (AUB) Episode overview Geothermal can heat in winter and cool in summer “quietly, invisibly, and reliably”—but design costs keep it out of reach for many communities. Prof. Elsa Maalouf explains a new simulation shortcut—the “bucket space approximation...

Release date: September 10, 2025 Guest: Dr. Digambara Patra (American University of Beirut), Nanochemistry & Environmental Remediation Episode Summary Researchers are tackling a massive health threat with a microscopic fix. AUB scientist Dr. Digambara Patra explains how silica nanoparticles—essentially “microscopic sand” —can adsorb and help remove persistent polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (...

What if the future of farming didn't lie in the soil—but in vertical towers, nutrient film pipes, and solar-powered greenhouses? In this article, we explore AUB’s pioneering vertical farming project, Lebanon’s first fully automated hydroponic farm, designed to address the growing threats of climate change, water scarcity, and food insecurity. Are you a member of the media looking to speak with an...

In this compelling episode, we delve into a quiet revolution happening in Lebanon that’s sending ripples across the global oncology community. Dr. Ali Bazarbachi, a physician-scientist at the American University of Beirut (AUB), has dedicated his career to tackling adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL)—a rare and deadly blood cancer once deemed incurable. Through decades of research, Dr. Bazarbachi...