AUB@Work

Episode Title: Lebanese Founders Are Turning Constraints Into a Start-Up AdvantageEpisode Description:Lebanon’s start-up founders face limited capital, ongoing instability, and a small domestic market. But at a New York Tech Week event cohosted by AUB’s Talal and Madiha Zein Innovation Park, known as iPark, and Impersonas, Lebanese founders and innovation leaders argued that those same pressures have helped create an entrepreneurial edge.This episode explores how diaspora networks, crisis-tested adaptability, deep talent, and institutional support are helping Lebanese entrepreneurs build global companies far beyond Lebanon.In This Episode:We look at four advantages Lebanese founders can build on now:Diaspora reach: how Lebanese entrepreneurs draw on global networks of capital, mentors, operators, and technologists.Crisis-tested adaptability: why navigating instability can sharpen the problem-solving skills start-ups need.Existing strengths: how sectors such as health care, higher education, technology, and the creative industries offer foundations for innovation.Institutional support: how iPark helps turn talent, resilience, and ideas into scalable ventures.Featured Voices:Kamal S. Shehadi, Lebanon’s minister of state for technology and artificial intelligence, and minister of the displacedRich Ziade, CEO of AboardKhaled Kteily, CEO of LegacyMichele Haddad, CCO at Synova Life Sciences and entrepreneur-in-residence for one of iPark’s flagship programsMaha Zouwayed, director of iParkKey Quotes:“The diaspora has been a source of capital, ideas, and volunteers.” — Kamal S. Shehadi“We flourish wherever you drop us.” — Rich Ziade“The second you define yourself as a victim is the second you lose.” — Khaled Kteily“The willingness to adapt your thinking and to navigate change is a Lebanese skill that can become a business advantage.” — Rich Ziade“At iPark, we focus on collaboration rather than competition. And it works.” — Maha ZouwayedWhy It Matters:The episode reframes Lebanon’s start-up story around possibility rather than limitation. The country’s challenges remain real, but its founders are showing how constraints can produce adaptability, global ambition, and a distinctive way of building companies.Listen to learn:How Lebanon’s diaspora strengthens its start-up ecosystemWhy adaptability is a practical business advantageWhere Lebanese founders may have the strongest competitive edgeHow iPark is helping make entrepreneurial success more repeatableWhy Lebanon’s next innovation challenge is not only producing exceptional founders, but building systems that help them scale

Why the Same Workout Works Differently for Different BodiesWhy do some people burn more energy doing the same activity, while others seem to conserve it? In this episode of AUB at Work, sports nutrition researcher Elie-Jacques Fares explains why the same workout, diet, or supplement plan can produce very different results from one person to another.Fares, assistant professor of clinical and sports nutrition in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the American University of Beirut, studies how bodies burn and conserve energy. His research looks at exercise efficiency, body composition, and the tools scientists use to better understand how each person’s body responds to movement, training, nutrition, and supplementation.The conversation begins with a surprising finding from one of Fares’s studies: when participants were compared while sitting and standing, only about 20 percent burned more energy while standing. The rest were “energy savers,” whose bodies performed the same task without spending more calories.That finding opens up a broader discussion about why energy expenditure is more complex than we often assume. Two people can appear to be doing the same exercise or movement, but internally, their bodies may be doing very different amounts of work.Fares also explains why exercise efficiency is not inherently good or bad. For endurance athletes, becoming more efficient can help conserve energy during long events. But for people trying to lose weight, too much adaptation to the same workout may reduce how much energy the body burns over time.He also discusses why nutrition and exercise plans should be tested individually, why athletes experiment with diet and supplements before major competitions, and why everyday exercisers should change one variable at a time when trying something new.The episode also explores body composition tools, including machines such as InBody, Tanita, and Seca, as well as bioelectrical impedance vector analysis, or BIVA. Fares explains how BIVA looks beyond basic estimates of fat mass and muscle mass to examine raw electrical values that can offer insight into hydration, cellular health, and how the body changes over time.Finally, Fares discusses where his research is headed next, including projects using stable isotopes to measure energy expenditure and body composition with greater precision, and studies examining how metabolism, fat mass, muscle mass, and activity patterns may interact with long-term health risks such as cardiovascular disease.In this episode:Why standing does not necessarily burn more energy than sittingWhat it means to be an “energy spender” or an “energy saver”Why two people doing the same workout may burn different amounts of energyHow exercise efficiency can help endurance athletes but complicate weight-loss effortsWhy nutrition and supplement plans should be tested individuallyHow to track whether a new diet, exercise routine, or supplement is workingWhat body composition tools can and cannot tell usHow BIVA may offer a more precise picture of hydration, body composition, and cellular healthHow Fares’s research could lead to more personalized nutrition, exercise, and health recommendationsFeatured expert:Elie-Jacques FaresAssistant Professor of Clinical and Sports NutritionDepartment of Nutrition and Food SciencesAmerican University of BeirutListen to learn why there may be no such thing as a one-size-fits-all workout—and why understanding how your own body uses energy could shape the future of exercise, nutrition, and health.

What the Current Ebola Outbreak Reveals About Public HealthIn this episode of AUB@Work, infectious disease expert Nesrine Rizk explains why the current Ebola outbreak in central Africa is unlikely to become another COVID-like pandemic, but still carries an urgent global warning.Rizk, head of the Division of Infectious Diseases and associate professor of clinical medicine at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, discusses how Ebola spreads, why this outbreak is especially concerning, and what it reveals about the relationship between disease, conflict, displacement, and fragile health systems.While Ebola does not spread through the air like respiratory viruses, delayed detection and limited treatment options can make containment far more difficult. The current outbreak involves the less common Bundibugyo strain, for which there is no approved vaccine or targeted treatment, leaving health officials with fewer tools to respond.The episode also explores the broader lesson behind outbreaks of Ebola, hantavirus, COVID-19, and other zoonotic diseases: in a connected world, the health of one community cannot be separated from the health of another.In this episode:Nesrine Rizk explains what Ebola is and how it is transmitted.She discusses why the current outbreak is alarming despite Ebola’s limited modes of transmission.She explains how conflict, displacement, and weakened health systems make outbreaks harder to contain.She reflects on what zoonotic diseases reveal about global vulnerability and shared responsibility.She argues that protecting communities affected by poverty, conflict, and weak health systems is both a practical public health priority and an ethical obligation.Featured expert:Nesrine RizkHead, Division of Infectious DiseasesAssociate Professor of Clinical MedicineAmerican University of Beirut Medical CenterListen to learn why diseases that emerge in one place rarely remain local — and why global health depends on protecting the communities most at risk.

Health Questions Need Health-Specific ChatbotsAI chatbots are changing how people search for health information, but when the topic is health, a confident answer is not always a safe one. In this episode of AUB@Work, Imad Elhajj, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the American University of Beirut, and Aline Germani, director of AUB’s Center for Public Health Practice, discuss why general-purpose AI tools can fall short when answering health questions and what it takes to build safer, more trustworthy health information chatbots.The conversation focuses on HIBA, a health information chatbot developed at AUB with carefully defined limits, curated sources, and ongoing public health review. Elhajj and Germani explain the difference between general health information and medical advice, why AI tools must know when not to answer, and how developers can design chatbots that better serve real users without replacing clinicians.In this episode:Why general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini are not ideal for health-related questionsThe difference between health information and medical adviceHow misleading chatbot answers can contribute to confusion, anxiety, and health misinformationWhy health chatbots need clear guardrails, curated sources, and ongoing testingHow AUB developed and evaluated HIBA for a local audienceWhat users should ask before trusting an AI tool with a health questionWhy AI literacy should begin early, especially when answers sound fluent and authoritativeFeatured guests:Imad ElhajjProfessor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, American University of BeirutAline GermaniDirector, Center for Public Health Practice, American University of BeirutKey takeaway:AI can help people better understand health topics, but it should not be used to diagnose, treat, or decide whether someone needs care. The safest tools are the ones designed for health, grounded in reliable sources, and clear about their own limits.

Dr. Charafeddine explains why parental mental health is not “extra”—it’s part of the care plan. Babies need nurturing caregivers to thrive, and caregivers need psychological, emotional, and social support to provide that care. While robust services like counseling, home visits, and referral pathways are often limited, costly, or inaccessible in fragile contexts, low-resource practices can still make a meaningful difference. We explore approaches like kangaroo care (skin-to-skin contact) and family-centered developmental care, and why strengthening the “ecosystem” around parents is foundational to improving outcomes for preterm infants.

In this episode, we talk with Joseph Zeaiter, professor at the American University of Beirut (Baha and Walid Bassatne Department of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Energy), whose team is working to reframe tire waste as a resource. His latest research explores a practical, scalable idea: using an inexpensive mineral-based catalyst—a nickel- and cerium-doped zeolite—to dramatically increase the amount of hydrogen and syngas you can recover during the recycling/treatment process.

As a young pathologist, Riyad El-Khoury spent long days hunched over a microscope—an intense, repetitive craft where fatigue is part of the job. Today, as associate professor of pathology and head of the Muhieddine Al-Ahdab Neuromuscular Diagnostic Laboratory at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC), he’s helping push pathology into a new era: AI-assisted diagnosis.In this episode, El-Khoury explains why the first big shift is going digital—turning glass slides into high-resolution images that AI can analyze at scale—and why the next leap may be even bigger: prediction. He also explores a provocative possibility: a future where AI moves beyond assistance and, in some workflows, operates autonomously—raising urgent questions about bias, generalizability, interpretability, and what it will take to build systems that are safe, equitable, and worthy of clinical trust.

What happens when a disaster hits—and the state can’t (or won’t) respond? In this episode, urban studies professor Mona Harb, co-founder of the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut, takes us inside Beirut’s post–port explosion recovery through the lens of “urban commoning”: the collective creation, repair, and shared management of urban spaces and resources outside state control. From Nation Station—a community hub born in an abandoned gas station—to a citywide ecosystem of organizers, nonprofits, faith-based networks, professional teams, political actors, and diaspora-led initiatives, Harb’s research traces how communities became de facto urban governors. But the episode also explores the limits: why some efforts stalled under politics, property disputes, donor constraints, and neighborhood tensions—and what it would take for urban commons to endure.

After the 2020 Beirut port blast, curator-archaeologist Nadine Panayot led a tech-enabled rescue at AUB’s Archaeological Museum—digitizing archives, virtually reconstructing shattered Roman glass, and scanning sites across Lebanon. She shares how community collaboration, ethical digitization, and practical tools are building resilient heritage systems ahead of her Nov 18 talk at The Met.

Environmental microbiologist Darine Salam explains why boosting native beach microbes (biostimulation) often cleans coastlines faster and with fewer side effects than chemicals or lab-engineered “superbugs.” Her team’s work shows how sampling first and dosing nutrients wisely lets nature do the heavy lifting.

AUB’s Daniel Asmar explains MGSO, a new system that turns a single phone camera into a real-time 3D mapper. It builds dense, photorealistic maps at ~30 fps using “Gaussian splats,” enabling AR, robotics, and everyday apps without special sensors.

At COP30, we look to places that have lived with heat for millennia. AUB Nature Conservation Center director Yaser Abunnasr explains how Middle Eastern indigenous knowledge—embedded in architecture, agriculture, and social norms—can guide fair, practical climate action. We spotlight NCC’s Med Trails project and a “local first, scale out” model that turns evidence from communities into usable tools and training.

Lebanon’s reliance on ~35,000 diesel generators—8–10k in Beirut alone—may be fueling one of the world’s highest bladder cancer rates. Dr. Hassan Dhaini (AUB Faculty of Health Sciences) explains his team’s multi-phase research on quasi-ultrafine particulates from generators, what those particles carry (carcinogens, heavy metals, mutagens), how they travel through the body, and why a known genetic susceptibility in Lebanese populations could be creating a “perfect storm.” He also lays out near-term fixes (diesel particulate filters and catalytic converters) and the longer-term pivot to cleaner energy.

A tiny sticker on a stop sign can fool an autonomous vehicle’s vision—no laptop needed. Professor Ali Chehab (American University of Beirut) explains a new “seatbelt for perception”: a model-agnostic defense that rides alongside existing self-driving software to catch adversarial tricks on road signs and lane markers in real time.

AUB’s Dr. Antoine Abou Fayad takes us from Lebanese fields to the lab bench to explain how his team uncovered four antibiotic-producing Streptomyces strains—three likely brand-new to science—and why those “earthy-smell” microbes could help counter the global rise of drug-resistant infections. We talk soil sleuthing, biosynthetic gene clusters, and the long road from natural product to bedside.

On Elephantine Island—where it rains as rarely as once a decade—archaeobotanist Dr. Claire Malleson uses exquisitely preserved seeds, pods, and plant fragments to piece together how ordinary Egyptians lived during the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2000–1600 BCE). When the sheer volume of data outgrew traditional methods, a serendipitous book-club meeting with Dr. Jordan Srour led to a machine-learning partnership that revealed hidden patterns: cleaner interior spaces, linen-waste storage rooms, and even a fireplace snapshot marked by a thin layer of acacia pods from a single day thousands of years ago. Malleson shows how AI doesn’t replace human expertise—it supercharges it—and how lessons from ancient agriculture can inform modern climate resilience.

Release date: September 10, 2025Guest: Dr. Digambara Patra (American University of Beirut), Nanochemistry & Environmental RemediationEpisode SummaryResearchers are tackling a massive health threat with a microscopic fix. AUB scientist Dr. Digambara Patra explains how silica nanoparticles—essentially “microscopic sand”—can adsorb and help remove persistent polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) like benzo[ghi]perylene from polluted waters. We unpack why PAHs linger, where they come from (from generators to wildfires), and how a recyclable, cost-effective adsorption approach could scale from lab to real-world treatment.What You’ll LearnWhat PAHs are and why benzo[ghi]perylene is especially concerningHow silica nanoparticles act like “sponges” to pull toxic molecules from waterWhy reversibility and recyclability matter for large-scale cleanupThe global picture: generators in Lebanon, wildfire fallout in North AmericaThe road from proof-of-concept to deployment (engineering and scale-up)

Release date: September 10, 2025Guest: Prof. Elsa Maalouf, Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering & Architecture, American University of Beirut (AUB)Episode overviewGeothermal can heat in winter and cool in summer “quietly, invisibly, and reliably”—but design costs keep it out of reach for many communities. Prof. Elsa Maalouf explains a new simulation shortcut—the “bucket space approximation”—that slashes compute time from days to hours on a standard laptop without sacrificing accuracy, making shallow geothermal more practical from Oslo to Valencia. She also maps the non-technical pieces (policy, finance, community awareness) needed to turn smarter models into real projects, including in energy-stressed places like Lebanon.Episode highlightsGeothermal 101: How ground-coupled systems deliver heating and coolingThe pain point: Why conventional modeling eats time, money, and specialized softwareThe breakthrough: A mathematical shortcut for the well’s “bucket” curvature and flowValidation: Comparable accuracy with far fewer resources; runs on a laptop in hoursBeyond engineering: Insights from a recent review in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews on policy, financing, and community buy-inImpact lens: Pathways for affordable deployment in Lebanon and other underserved regions

Air date: September 10, 2025Guest: Simon Neaime, Professor of Economics, American University of Beirut (AUB)Episode SummaryAcross parts of the Middle East, daily life often unfolds as if the state is absent—traffic laws ignored, unreliable public services, and electricity rationed. In this episode, economist Simon Neaime explains why these symptoms point to a deeper crisis: a collapse in trust. He traces the roots of distrust to structural legacies (colonial borders, authoritarianism, patronage) and immediate shocks (conflict, economic collapse), showing how “parallel governance” by non-state actors erodes state legitimacy. Yet Neaime argues the trust deficit is not irreversible. He lays out a practical agenda—from civic empowerment and municipal participation to judicial independence, anti-corruption, inclusive representation, and e-government—highlighting real-world steps in Tunisia, Jordan, and Lebanon’s 2025 municipal elections. His bottom line: without basics like food security, education, healthcare, and reliable public goods, political reforms won’t stick.Key TakeawaysTrust is foundational to political and economic stability, social cohesion, and development.Root causes are layered: colonial legacies, arbitrary borders, authoritarian patronage, conflict-driven institutional decay.Parallel governance arises when the state fails to deliver; militias and non-state actors fill service gaps, undermining legitimacy.Rebuilding trust starts locally: empower municipalities, councils, and civil society to create real participation channels.Rule-of-law reforms matter: judicial independence and anti-corruption are necessary complements to participation.Inclusion is a pillar: decentralization, fair electoral rules, and representation for women, youth, and diaspora widen legitimacy.Deliver the basics: poverty alleviation and reliable public goods must advance alongside governance and economic measures.

In this compelling episode, we delve into a quiet revolution happening in Lebanon that’s sending ripples across the global oncology community. Dr. Ali Bazarbachi, a physician-scientist at the American University of Beirut (AUB), has dedicated his career to tackling adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL)—a rare and deadly blood cancer once deemed incurable.Through decades of research, Dr. Bazarbachi has upended longstanding beliefs about the disease and pioneered a new treatment strategy targeting the HTLV-1 virus responsible for ATL. His innovative work has quadrupled survival rates and now, with a novel triple therapy, is showing potential for a cure.Are you a member of the media looking to speak with an AUB expert on this topic or others? Please email [email protected]​​.Interested in getting stories like this in your inbox? Subscribe to our monthly newsletter! To see more stories like these, click here!​​​​

What if the future of farming didn't lie in the soil—but in vertical towers, nutrient film pipes, and solar-powered greenhouses? In this article, we explore AUB’s pioneering vertical farming project, Lebanon’s first fully automated hydroponic farm, designed to address the growing threats of climate change, water scarcity, and food insecurity.Are you a member of the media looking to speak with an AUB expert on this topic or others? Please email [email protected]​​.Interested in getting stories like this in your inbox? Subscribe to our monthly newsletter! To see more stories like these, click here!​​​​