Alan Shihadeh is the dean of the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture (MSFEA) at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Shihadeh earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin and his doctorate in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the field of combustion in 1998. He spent a year at Birzeit University as a Fulbright fellow before joining AUB as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering in 2000. Shihadeh was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2006 and to full professor in 2012. He served as interim dean of MSFEA in 2016-17 and was appointed dean in September 2017.

Shihadeh is also Project Director at the VCU Center for the Study of Tobacco Products, a multidisciplinary group of researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University, AUB, and Johns Hopkins University; founding director of the Aerosol Research Laboratory; and co-director of the Collaborate for the Study of Inhaled Atmospheric Aerosols (CARS). He advises or advised numerous agencies including the World Health Organization.

Author or co-author of more than 100 refereed journal publications primarily concerned with the chemistry, physics, and exposure science of particle pollutants, Shihadeh’s research has been sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the International Development Research Center (Canada). He has developed novel technologies that are used by researchers in the Middle East, Europe, and North America to study tobacco use and effects.  In 2018, he and his collaborators were awarded the American Psychological Association Prize for Interdisciplinary Team Research. He is a Highly Cited Researcher and has held appointments at the University of Texas, MIT, Duke University, and the University of New Mexico.