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17 Junior Faculty to Receive Research Grants
The AUB Faculty Development Program will award 17 AUB junior faculty
members research grants for the year 2007-08, as part of the Junior Faculty
Paid Research Leave program.
The research leave program was initiated in 2003 with the support of the
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which had given AUB a three-year
grant (2003-05) of $600,000 to provide a semester of paid research leave
for full-time assistant professors entering their third or fourth year
of appointment. Since 2006, the program has been fully funded by the Faculty
Development Program. Faculty awarded this grant may use it for research
and writing in Beirut or for travel for research purposes.
The 17 research fellows were announced by Provost Peter Heath as follows:
George Arbid, an assistant professor of architecture, will study
the influence of Eastern European modernism on practicing architects in
Lebanon, focusing on the work of Polish architect Karol Schayer (1900-1971).
Arbid's studies will lead to publishing a book on the topic and perhaps
organize an exhibition of Schayer's completed and projected works.
Arbid received his PhD from Harvard University in 2002. He is entering
his fourth year at AUB.
Bacel Maddah, an assistant professor of engineering management,
will be conducting research on retail operations and revenue management,
while as a visiting scholar in the fall semester at the Grado Department
of Industrial and Systems Management at Virginia Tech. He will focus on
developing models for decision-making on pricing, variety, and inventory
and also develop models reflecting how consumers make buying decisions.
Maddah holds a PhD in industrial and systems engineering from Virginia
Tech (2005). He is entering his third year at AUB.
Krzysztof Fleszar, an assistant professor of business information
and decision systems, plans to develop algorithms for bin-packing and
resources-constrained project scheduling. The algorithms would solve the
problem of packing a set of items into a minimum set of containers. The
resources-constrained project would consist of scheduling a set of non-preemptive
activities.
Fleszar earned his PhD in informatics in 2005 from the Warsaw University
of Technology. He is entering his third year at AUB.
Nelson King, an assistant professor of business information and
decision systems, will work on a project of e-prescribing, which is the
creation of an electronic prescription by a physician that can be checked
electronically for patient eligibility, potential drug interactions, and
formulary adherence before being transmitted to the pharmacy for dispensing.
King's research team is currently considered a central authority in this
field.
King earned his PhD in industrial and systems engineering from the University
of Southern California in 2001. He is entering his third year at AUB.
Mahfoud earned his PhD in statistics in 2001 from the University of Florida. He is entering his third year at AUB.
Sawsan Abdul Rahman, an assistant professor of health behavior and education, will study the association between social inequalities and health, focusing on data from Lebanon and from Arab immigrants in the United States.
Abdul Rahman earned her PhD in health behavior and education from the University of Michigan's School of Public Health in 2005. She is entering her third year at AUB.
Bilal Kaafarani, an assistant professor of chemistry, will work on developing fluorescent chemical sensors to detect the presence of specific chemicals, heavy metals, and other pollutants that may exist in the environment or human body. Developing molecular sensors is highly important for environmental monitoring, clinical diagnosis, and the study of intracellular processes.
Kaafarani earned his PhD in photochemical sciences from Bowling Green State University in 2002. He is entering his fourth year at AUB.
Charles Harb, an assistant professor of social psychology, will study values and self-concepts among Lebanese and Iraqis. He will also explore motivational factors in identity construction across cultures and work on designing projects of social identity. He will spend his leave at Oxford University, collaborating with researchers there and attending workshops on advanced statistics.
Harb completed his PhD in social psychology at the University of Sussex in 2003. He is entering his fifth year at AUB.
Wassim Masri, an assistant professor of computer science, will study available techniques, such as dynamic slicing, and investigate new ones in order to help devise a new approach for software debugging and fault localization, two problems that have stumped programmers and potentially compromised security in information flows.
Masri received his PhD in computer engineering in 2005 from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He is entering his fourth year at AUB.
Cyrus Schayegh, an assistant professor of history, will be finishing his book on the relationship between science, class, and the formation of modern Iranian society. Entitled Who Is Knowledgeable Is Strong: Science, Class, and the Formation of Modern Iranian Society, 1900-1940, the book will be published by the University of California Press. He will also conduct research on eugenics in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt.
Schayegh earned his PhD in history from Columbia University in 2004. He is in his third year at AUB.
Patricia Pedersen, an assistant professor of education, will work on a study of Lebanese adolescents' attitudes towards American culture and US international relations, as well as American adolescents' attitudes toward Arab/Lebanese culture. She will continue working on a themed edition about the Middle East for the education journal, Social Education, which will include other articles about the region.
Pedersen earned her PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1998 in social studies education. She is in her third year at AUB.
Karim Makdisi, an assistant professor of political studies, will work on his ongoing research into the implementation process of and the compliance with international environmental treaties in Lebanon. His research will focus on identifying the factors that hamper compliance in Lebanon and the policies that would enhance such compliance, given the country's political and socio-economic context.
Makdisi earned his PhD in international relations in 2001 from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is entering his fourth year at AUB.
Fatima Abu Salem, an assistant professor of computer science, will study complex algorithms to find the best ways to process large amounts of data while using irregular data structures and high-level data types. She will use her leave to complete four scientific papers, conducting empirical studies to support her theoretical studies.
Abu Salem earned her PhD in computing science in 2004 from Oxford University. She is entering her fourth year at AUB.
Kirsten Scheid, an assistant professor of anthropology, will be completing a research project, an essay, and a book. The research project will examine the cultural formations mediating the notions of tastefulness and civic merit in national practices among the Lebanese. The essay will explore the acquisition of cultural virtues at the birthday parties common among upper class Lebanese prepubescents. Scheid will also transform her doctoral thesis into a book, Painters, Picture-Makers, and Lebanon.
Scheid received her PhD in anthropology in 2005 from Princeton University. She is entering her third year at AUB.
Fahmi Banafa, an assistant professor of education, will spend his leave in Yemen studying the impact of the internet and multimedia on the pronunciation skills of Arab college students learning English.
Professor Banafa received his PhD in instructional technologies from New Mexico State University in 2004. He is in his third year at AUB.
May Farhat, an assistant professor, will spend her research leave refining and expanding her doctoral dissertation on the architectural complex of the shrine of the eighth Shi'i Imam in Mashhad. She expects to publish her results in a book that will also appeal to scholars outside the field of Islamic studies.
Farhat received her PhD in Islamic architecture in 2002 from Harvard University. She is in her fourth year at AUB.
Amy Zenger, an assistant professor of English, will be conducting a longitudinal study of undergraduate student writers at AUB. The study would help produce a more complete profile of students and their language skills, and thus contribute towards building a language curriculum based on the real strengths of AUB students, with regard to the teaching and study of English as a second language.
Zenger received her PhD in English, specializing in composition and rhetoric, from the University of New Hampshire in 2004. She is in her fourth year at AUB.