For Professor Bacel Maddah, now being a member of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture (FEA) is like “coming back home.” His first affiliation with AUB was in 1998, when he became a master’s student in the FEA Engineering Management Program after earning his bachelor’s in civil engineering from the Lebanese University. Maddah wasted no time preparing himself for a professorship. After completing his master’s at AUB in 2000, he traveled to the United States to pursue his PhD studies in industrial and systems engineering at Virginia Tech University. And in 2005, as soon as he finished his dissertation (on pricing, variety, and inventory decisions in retail operations management), he immediately returned to Lebanon, his homeland, and to AUB. As an assistant professor in the FEA, Maddah currently teaches a course in engineering economy for third-year engineering students, as well as an engineering management course for fourth-year students. He shares with his students the expertise he gained from jobs with United Airlines and the US—based Hannaford Bros. stores. As a senior analyst for United Airlines, Maddah worked in supply chain management on spare parts allocation to warehouses and major airports. With Hannaford Bros., he was a business information analyst working as part of a group on analyzing the performance of Hannaford’s stores. This experience motivated the subject of his PhD dissertation and his subsequent research on retail management. During his academic years in the US, Professor Maddah worked as a teaching assistant for four years in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Virginia Tech, and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Southern Maine. The courses he taught included statistical quality control, probabilistic operations research, and an introductory course in statistics. “I like teaching but I also like doing research,” said Maddah. “I believe good teaching goes side by side with research.” He believes in communicating knowledge to students informally through lively class discussions. “I would like to see students learning, rather than just getting a good grade and a degree,” he remarked. Describing what binds him most to Lebanon, he replied, “The weather, the food, and the warmth of the people.” Like many other concerned citizens, he went on to complain about the problem of sectarianism, but said, “AUB and Lebanon are unique in the way they promote American, or Western, education and culture while maintaining their own identity.” Maddah has published in Management Science and Journal of the Operational Research Society, two of the most prestigious journals in business and economics. He has also co-authored a number of research papers during the past year. His research interests lie in marketing and operations interface, retail operations, and supply chain management. He is currently researching queuing theory (a branch of probability theory concerned with the most useful handling of various waiting-line situations, from airplanes waiting to land to computer programs filed for processing). An activist in pursuit of knowledge, Maddah has participated in several seminars and workshops. In mid-November, he traveled to San Francisco to present a paper on retail management.
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