Engineering and technology
Dr. Alan Shihadeh is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He earned his doctorate at the Sloan Lab in 1998 and then spent a year as a Fulbright Fellow at Birzeit University (Palestine), where he began investigating waterpipe tobacco smoke emissions. He joined the AUB faculty in 2000, and soon after founded the AUB Aerosol Research Laboratory. Dr. Shihadeh’s research and publications are primarily concerned with the chemistry, physics, and exposure science of particle pollutants. This effort, sponsored by the U.S. NIH, FDA, and the Lebanese Council for Scientific Research, involves: 1) developing and demonstrating methods to evaluate modified risk and other novel tobacco products such as electronic cigarettes, 2) investigating toxicant exposure and health effects of tobacco smoking using a narghile waterpipe (also known as a hookah), and 3) understanding the origins, properties, and phase partitioning behavior of atmospheric particle pollutants. He has developed novel technologies that are used by researchers in the Middle East, Europe, and North America to study human puff topography. Dr. Shihadeh serves as a scientific expert to the World Health Organization’s Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation and is a Project Director and Executive Leadership Committee member of the Center for the Study of Tobacco Products at Virginia Commonwealth University.