Rola Salman

Engineering and technology

Dr. Shihadeh earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin and his doctorate in sciences in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the field of combustion in 1998. He taught at Birzeit University before joining AUB as an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering. At AUB, he conducted a systematic study of emissions from waterpipe tobacco smoking, the first in a series of ground-breaking studies on the chemistry, human behavior, and health effects of the practice. Evidence produced by what became the AUB Aerosol Research Laboratory (ARL) – now a leading center that develops and exports scientific instruments to research laboratories in North America, Europe, and the Middle East – led the World Health Organization (WHO) to issue its first International Advisory warning in 2005, compelling regional and international governments to include waterpipes in tobacco control efforts. Dr. Shihadeh serves as an advisor to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a scientific expert to the World Health Organization (WHO), and a Project Director and Executive Leadership Committee member of the Center for the Study of Tobacco Products at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a member of the Air Quality Research Unit, an AUB-Saint Joseph University collaboration, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the American Chemical Society’s Chemical Research in Toxicology journal. He co-directs the Collaborative for Inhaled and Atmospheric Aerosols and the Tobacco Control Research Group at AUB, and sits on the Tobacco-Free AUB 2018 Task Force.