Physics
Dr. Jihad Touma is a Professor of Physics at the American University of Beirut. His work in Astrophysical Dynamics has brought to light: the chaotic rotation of Mars; a mechanism driving large scale volcanism on Earth and Venus (touching on mass extinction on Earth, and resurfacing of Venus); the early resonant forcing of the lunar orbit (solving a then thirty year old puzzle); chaos in the orbital architecture of extrasolar planets; a process for the doubling of stellar black hole nuclei, and more recently, instabilities in multi-planet systems in binaries. With Hassan Al-Assaad, he co-founded EQLIM (www.eqlim.com), a data analytics startup harvesting geopolitical events with which he hopes to revisit the "statistics of deadly quarrels".