About the President
Fadlo R. Khuri, MD
The 16th president of the American University of Beirut (AUB), Fadlo R. Khuri's leadership has been transformative. He assumed office on September 1, 2015. He has led the university through the third worst economic collapse since the mid-19th century, the devastating August 4, 2020, Beirut explosion, the pandemic, and the war on Lebanon in 2023-24, providing enlightened leadership under sustained pressure. Under his leadership, AUB has forged strong partnerships with leading foundations and universities around the world and enhanced its global reputation as a mission-driven university. In March 2024, the Board of Trustees voted “unanimously and with great enthusiasm" to extend President Khuri's five-year appointment as president through 2030.
Khuri negotiated a new faculty contract, restored tenure, tripled financial assistance awarded to AUB students, and diversified the student body by attracting outstanding students from across Africa and Asia. He recruited and empowered inclusive and brave senior leadership teams, 50 percent of whom are women.
Other highlights of recent years include Khuri's leadership of the successful BOLDLY AUB fundraising campaign that raised more than $805 million for university priorities and attracted the single largest gift in AUB history; the implementation of a tobacco-free policy at the university and medical center (in 2018); the reintroduction of academic tenure (in 2018); the establishment of an independent nursing school (in 2018); the relaunch of the Worldwide Alumni Association of the American University of Beirut (WAAAUB), the university's global alumni association, in 2019; the adoption of VITAL 2030, a new campus master plan and strategic plan for the university (2019); setting up more than a dozen schools for Syrian refugees and securing electronic medical records for 15,000 refugees; the launch of AUB Online; establishing the American University of Beirut – Mediterraneo in Pafos, Cyprus, AUB's first twin campus outside Lebanon; and securing the Keserwan Medical Center, AUB's first community hospital, in Jounieh, Lebanon.
Khuri also enhanced and revised national cancer guidelines for Lebanon in 2018. He co-led a highly effective national COVID‑19 vaccination campaign, vaccinating 99.7 percent of AUB faculty, students, staff, and alumni and 93 percent of adults over the age of 70 across Lebanon. Under his leadership, the AUB Medical Center adopted EPIC seamlessly and became the first member of the COSMOS research consortium outside the US.
During his tenure as president of the American University of Beirut, the university has risen dramatically in global rankings: from 801 (in 2015) to 381 (in 2024) in the US News list of Best Global Universities. AUB's academic and research reputation has also grown and is reflected in its dramatic rise in the QS World University Rankings, from 501 (in 2016) to 250 (in 2025).
Prior to joining AUB, Dr. Khuri was a faculty member at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, from 1995 until 2002.
He joined the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia where he was appointed to the Frances Kelly Blomeyer Chair in 2002 and the Roberto C. Goizueta Chair in translational research in 2007. Khuri was instrumental in leading the development of several major cancer-related programs in the United States and was the principal investigator on a number of National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society grants. He has authored over 750 publications, including 385 peer-reviewed journal articles, 55 reviews, 45 editorials and perspectives in leading journals, 250 meeting abstracts, and over 15 letters, notes, chapters, and short surveys. He served for 10 years (2011-21) as editor-in-chief of Cancer, the oldest and one of the most prestigious journals in the field.
Khuri has also served as a permanent member of multiple peer review committees for the American Cancer Society, American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and was chair of the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Oncology Study Section. He has received numerous awards in recognition of his scholarly achievements including the 2006 Nagi Sahyoun Award of the Middle East Medical Assembly; the 2013 Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Memorial Award by the American Association for Cancer Research; TAKREEM's Scientific and Technological Achievement Award in 2015; and the 2018 Ben Qurrah Award, the World Health Organization's No Tobacco Award, and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's Joseph W. Cullen Award, also in 2018. Khuri became a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2014, a full member of the Lebanese Academy of Sciences in 2015, and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2017. He is the current vice president of the Lebanese Academy of Sciences.
