Fadlo R. Khuri
President, American University of Beirut

Dr. Fadlo R. Khuri is the 16th president of the American University of Beirut (AUB). Khuri is an accomplished molecular and translational oncologist, having authored over 750 publications, he served for 10 years from 2011-2021 as editor-in-chief of the journal Cancer.


Since assuming the presidency, Khuri has greatly increased external and institutional support for students through new and expanded scholarship and financial aid programs. He has helped obtain grants and donations for underprivileged students and patients totaling over $250 million.


Khuri brought to AUB a new vision for health that takes an all-encompassing approach to human health, including mental health, nutrition, agriculture, nursing, public health, science, and clinical medicine. Since 2015, AUB has introduced new PhD programs in epidemiology and chemistry, as well as an interdisciplinary, inter-faculty PhD program in biomedical engineering. In 2019, the university established the Talal and Madiha Zein AUB Innovation Park to nurture startups and cultivate an entrepreneurship ecosystem in Lebanon. This period also saw the elevation of the Hariri School of Nursing to independent faculty status, and the naming of the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture in honor of alumnus Maroun Semaan following his transformative gift to AUB, the largest in the university’s history.


In 2018, Khuri spearheaded the effort to transform AUB into a fully tobacco-free campus and was awarded the World No Tobacco Day Award by the WHO. Khuri’s work has been recognized with several major awards including the 2006 Nagi Sahyoun Award of the Middle East Medical Assembly for “research that has changed the way we think about and treat lung and head and neck cancer,” the 2010 Waun Ki Hong Distinguished Professorship by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the 2013 Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Memorial Award from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (2007), a fellow of the American College of Physicians (2009) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2015), and a member of the Lebanese Academy of Sciences (2015).

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