Faculty

Dr. Daniel Asmar

Ph.D. in Systems Design Engineering

Email: da20@aub.edu.lb
Office: Bechtel Building, Room: 407
Phone: +961 1 350 000, Ext. 3427
Daniel Asmar is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the American University of Beirut. Daniel earned his Ph.D. in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Daniel’s research interests include Robotics and Computer Vision. Specifically, he has interests in service robotics, autonomous robot navigation and mapping, environment representation and recognition, and segmentation methods in Computer Vision.

Dr. Elie Shammas

Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering

Email: es34@aub.edu.lb
Office: Bechtel Building, Room: 502
Phone: +961 1 350 000, Ext. 3546
Elie Shammas graduated from the American University of Beirut with a B.E. degree from the Mechanical Engineering Department in 1999. Then under the guidance of Professors Howie Choset and Alfred Rizzi he acquired a project-work Masters of Science and Ph.D from the Mechanical Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University in May 2001 and March 2006, respectively. From 2007 till 2010, Elie worked as a research and development engineer at Hexagon Metrology where he developed kinematic calibration algorithms for high accuracy portable coordinate measuring machines. Moreover, from 2008 till 2010, Elie has taught graduate and senior level controls courses in the Mechanical Engineering Department at San Diego State University. Since 2010, Elie has been an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the American University of Beirut.Research Interests: Nonholonomic motion planning; Robotics; Mechanism design; Kinematic calibration.

Dr. Imad H. Elhajj

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

Email: ie05@aub.edu.lb
Office: Bechtel Building, Room: 415
Phone: +961 1 350 000, Ext. 3444
Imad H. Elhajj received his Bachelor of Engineering in Computer and Communications Engineering, with distinction, from the American University of Beirut in 1997 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the American University of Beirut. In 2014, he co-founded, with two other professors in ECE, SAUGO 360 the first startup to be incubated at AUB. Dr. Elhajj is the past chair of IEEE Lebanon Section, senior member of IEEE and senior member of ACM. He is an ABET program evaluator. His research interests include instrumentation and robotics, cyber security, sensor and computer networks, and multimedia networking. Imad received the Best Research Paper Award at the Third International Conference on Cognitive and Behavioral Psychology (CBP), the Best Paper award at the IEEE Electro Information Technology Conference in June 2003, and the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Information Society in the 21st Century in November 2000. Dr. Elhajj is recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award at the American University of Beirut, June 2011, the Kamal Salibi Academic Freedom Award, 2014, and the most Outstanding Graduate Student Award from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University in April 2001.

Dr. Naseem Daher

Ph.D. in Systems, Measurement, and Control

Email: nd38@aub.edu.lb
Office: Bechtel Building, Room: 303
Phone: +961 1 350 000, Ext. 3542
Naseem Daher is an Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut with a joint appointment in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the Mechanical Engineering Department, within the Control Systems area. Naseem received the BSME and MSME degrees from Lawrence Technological University in Michigan, USA in 2006 and 2008, respectively. Naseem worked at TRW Automotive in Michigan, USA between 2005-2011, where he was involved in the research and development of electronic braking control systems. Naseem earned his PhD degree from Purdue University in Indiana, USA with a specialty in dynamic systems, measurement, and control in 2014.Research Interests: Modeling and control of dynamic systems, advanced control theory and applications, virtual sensing and sensor fusion, mechatronics and robotics, automotive active safety systems, alternative automotive powertrains, efficient fluid power actuation technologies.

Post Doctoral Fellows

Mohamad El Hariri

Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project: A Unified Framework for Bandwidth Management and Motion Control of Collaborative Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Swarms
Email: me193@mail.aub.edu
Mohamad El Hariri received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Florida International University (FIU), Miami, Fl., USA in 2018. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mechatronics Engineering with distinction from Rafik Hariri University, Mechref, Lebanon, in 2012 and 2014, respectively. He joined the Vision and Robotics Lab at the American University of Beirut as a Research Associate in March 2019. Between Jan 2016 and Dec 2018, Mohamad was working with the Energy Systems Research Laboratory at FIU on methods and techniques for secure control and operation of energy cyber-physical systems through intelligent agents. Mohamad’s research interests are interdisciplinary, and they include: cyber security for cyber-physical systems, substation automation systems, middleware and data interoperabilty for smart grids, smart decision support systems for routing and charge control of Electric Vehicles (EVs), artificial intelligence techniques for microgrids’ energy management and data privacy, and bandwidth management for robotic swarms.

PhD Students

Abbas Sidaoui

M.S. in Mechatronics Engineering

Project: Mobile Robots and Mixed Reality
Email: ams108@mail.aub.edu
Abbas Sidaoui received his BS and MS degrees in Mechatronics engineering, with distinction, in 2014 and 2016 from Rafik Hariri University, Lebanon. Since then, he is enrolled as a PhD student at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. His research interests are in mobile robots and mixed reality, mainly in human-robot interaction, where he had published his work in premiere conferences and journals. His passion to robotics lead him to winning several international competitions in Japan, Europe, and the Middle east.

Mahdi Saleh

M.E. in Computer and Communications Engineering

Project: In SITU Measurement of Oil Slick Thickness in Open Water Environment
Email: mbs18@mail.aub.edu
Mahdi Saleh is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, American University of Beirut (AUB), Beirut, Lebanon. He received the B.E. and M.E degrees in Computer and Communication Engineering from the Islamic University of Lebanon (IUL), Beirut, Lebanon, in 2012 and 2015, respectively. His current research interests include instrumentation and measurement, sensor design, and artificial intelligence.
Mr. Saleh was a recipient of the CNRS-L/AUB Ph.D. Scholarship Award of the Natioinal Council for Scientific Research-Lebanon in 2016 and the First Place Award of the BLF-IFI Climate Change Student Competition from the AUB’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs in 2018.

Ahmad Kourani

B.S. in Mechatronics Engineering

Project: Adaptive Robust Control of Quadcopter UAVs
Email: ahk42@mail.aub.edu
Ahmad Kourani received his B.S. (2015) in mechanical engineering from Isfahan University of Technology, with a focus area in mechatronics. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the American University of Beirut. He worked on sea wave simulation and forecast at the American University of Beirut between 2015 and 2017. His current research focuses on the control of a quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicle using adaptive robust techniques.

Omar Itani

B.E. in Mechatronics Engineering

Project: NA
Email: oji00@mail.aub.edu
Omar Itani received his Bachelors of Engineering degree in Mechatronics Engineering, with high distinction, from the Rafik Hariri University, in 2018. In the same year, he was enrolled in the Accelerated Ph.D. program at the American University of Beirut, specializing in Robotics. Omar’s research interests include robotics, mechanism design, kinematics and dynamics, and motion planning.

Maya Antoun

M.E. in Mechanical Engineering

Project: Semantic SLAM in outdoor environment
Email: mja27@mail.aub.edu
Maya Antoun received her bachelor of engineering from The American University Of Beirut in June 2011 and the Masters of Engineering from the American University of Beirut in February 2013. Maya worked for 5 years as a project manager in a yacht building company ZEE Marine.She is currently pursuing her PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Her main research concentration is in Semantic SLAM: Detecting Objects in a SLAM map in order to Optimize the camera trajectory and the detected object location in the map. Maya received the CNRS-L Doctoral Scholarship Award from the Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research in September 2018.

Carine Bardawil

Masters of Research in Intelligent Transportation Systems and Industrial Control

Project: Ground Vehicles Driver Assistance and Active Safety Control Systems
Email: crb06@aub.edu.lb
Carine recieved her Bachelors degree in Electrical and Eelctronics Engineering from the Lebanese University. She then completed a Masters of Research degree from the University of Technology of Compiègne in France. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research interests include control theory, industrial control, intelligent transportation, vehicle dynamics control and automotive active safety systems.

Georges Younes

M.E. in Mechanical Engineering

Project: Occlusion Detection & Handling in Monocular SLAM
Email: gyy01@mail.aub.edu
Georges Younes received his bachelor of engineering from Notre Dame University in Spring 2013 and the Masters of Engineering from the American University of Beirut in February 2016. He is currently pursuig his PhD in a joint program between AUB and the University of Waterloo. His main research concentration is in vision based SLAM techniques: Improving both the mapping and tracking techniques.

Master’s Students

Mohammad Kassem Zein

B.S. in Computer and Communications Engineering

Project: Teleoperation of mobile robots
Email: mhk50@mail.aub.edu
Mohammad Kassem Zein received his Bachelor of Science in Computer and Communications Engineering – Emphasis on Mechatronics, with distinction, from the American University of Science and Technology in 2017. He is currently a master’s student in Mechatronics Engineering at the American University of Beirut. His research interests include: Teleoperation of mobile robots, machine learning, robotics, and SLAM.

Mohamad Ballout

B.S.E in Mechanical Engineering

Project: Action recognition using deep network
Email: mab73@mail.aub.edu
Mohamad Ballout received his Bachelor of Science and Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering from California State University of Northridge. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree at AUB with a focus on computer vision. The project that he is working on is action recognition and generating synthetic videos to improve accuracy of a deep neural network.

Rema Daher

B.E. in Mechanical Engineering

Project: Standardize and improve mapping in SLAM
Email: rgd05@mail.aub.edu
Rema Daher graduated with a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering and is now a Masters student in Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics track at the American University of Beirut. Rema is doing research with Doctor Daniel Asmar on improving mapping in SLAM to standardize it and add a layered approach to SLAM maps.

Nael Jaber

B.E. in Mechatronics Engineering

Project: Detection and Localization of Pine Processionary Moth Nests in Pine Trees Using Synthetic Images
Email: naj18@mail.aub.edu
Nael Jaber graduated from Rafik Hariri University in 2018 with a B.E in Mechatronics. He is currently pursuing his M.E in Mechanical Engineering at the American University of Beirut. His research topic currently is computer vision oriented working on detection of nests in pine trees after training the machine learning algorithm on synthetic data due to lack of a large dataset.

Abdul Rehman El Bsat

B.E. in Mechanical Engineering

Project: Automatic tooth segmentation of the Upper Palate
Email: ahe23@mail.aub.edu
Abdul Rehman El Bsat received his Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering, from the American University of Beirut in June 2018, where he is currently pursuing his Master of Engineering. His research topic involves dealing with segmentation of teeth from the upper palate using geometric features identification through machine learning.

Joe Taoum

B.E. in Mechanical Engineering

Project: Deployable and Reconfigurable antennas
Email: jet04@mail.aub.edu
Joe Taoum received his Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering, with distinction, from the American University of Beirut in June 2018, where he is currently pursuing his Master of Engineering. His research topic involves dealing with shape changing structures to be used as reconfigurable antennas capable of shifting their frequencies and radiation patterns.

Majd Wardeh

B.E. in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project: NA
Email: mmw06@mail.aub.edu
Majd Wardeh received his B.E in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with high distinction, from Damascus University, in 2017. During his studies, he participated in many local and international robotic and programming competitions such as World Robotics Olympiad, ACM-ACPC. He is currently pursuing his M.E in ECE at the American University of Beirut. Majd’s research interests include computer vision, robotics, and machine learning.

Hussein Jlailaty

M.E. in Mechanical Engineering

Project: Depth Estimation from Edge and Blur Estimation
Email: hma98@mail.aub.edu
Hussein Aljlailaty received his bachelor of engineering from the Lebanese University in 2004. Currently a research assistant at the American University of Beirut where he is pursuing a masters of engineering in mechatronics. His main research concentration is in depth estimation techniques from still images and other topics related to adaptive filtering.

Undergraduate Students

Mariane Mansour

B.E. in Mechanical Engineering

Project: Semantic SLAM in outdoor environment
Email: mmm105@mail.aub.edu
Mariane Mansour is expecting to receive her bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in May 2020 from the American University of Beirut. She completed an internship at BMW-AG in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and an internship
at TU-Berlin in modelling of VCSELS. Her topics of interest are modeling and control of systems, machine learning, and SLAM techniques.

Yasmine El Hawari

B.E. in Mechanical Engineering

Project: Standardize and improve mapping in SLAM
Email: yde01@mail.aub.edu
Yasmine is currently finishing her last semester as an undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering at the American University of Beirut. Yasmine is doing research with Doctor Daniel Asmar on improving mapping in SLAM and standardizing it.

Maher Kazzaz

B.E. in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project: Improving 3D SLAM Techniques
Email: mak97@mail.aub.edu
Maher Kazzaz is an undergraduate student at the American University of Beirut pursuing a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests include SLAM techniques, robotics, computer vision, and machine learning.

Alumni

Rahaf Rahal

PhD student – Univ Rennes, Inria, CNRS, IRISA

Serge Mghabghab

Ph.D student at Michigan State University.

Mahmoud Hamandi

Ph.D student at Laboratoire d’analyse et d’architecture des systèmes.

Noel Maalouf

Currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at Poznan University of Technology, Poland working on the EU H2020 funded project subTerranean Haptic INvestiGator (THING).

Georges Chahine

Research Assistant at Georgia Tech

Salah Bazzi

Currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Northeastern University.

Bilal Hammoud

Currently a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.

Abed Al Rahman Al Makdah

Currently a PhD student at the University of Iowa.

Hadi Salman

Currently a Masters student at Carnegie Mellon University.

Assaad Mrad

Currently a PhD student at Duke University.

Ali Harakeh

Currently a PhD student at the University of Waterloo.

Mohamad Alsalman

Currently a PhD student at the University of Southern California.

Ali Kanso

Currently an Instructor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at AUB.

Bilal Wehbe

Currently a researcher at DFKI Robotics Innovation Center.

Joy Sfeir

Currently a Mechanical Design Engineer at Technica International.

Wael Salem

Currently a Graduate Mechanical Engineer at Petrofac Ltd.

Firas Abi-Farraj

Currently a PhD student at IRISA/INRIA.

Karim Hassanieh

Currently a System Integration Engineer at ICAD.

Jean Lahoud

Currently a PhD student at KAUST.

Noel El Khazen

Currently a Graduate Engineer at Petrofac Ltd.

Sevag Babikian

Currently an Instructor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at AUB.

Bassam Jalgha

Co-founder and CTO at Band Industries, Inc.

Ali Muhieddine

Process and Production Manager at XXX Diamonds.

Aram Kazandjian

General Manager of Sunny Solar Systems.

Sabine El Kahi

Founder of Kids Genius.

Raja Oueis

Raja, may his gentle soul rest in peace, was a PhD student at Oxford University.

Samir Shaker

Currently a freelancer developing application for handheld devices (examples such as Twinkly, and EmotiFace).