Fadlo R. Khuri is the 16th president of the American University of Beirut (AUB). He assumed office on September 1, 2015. His visionary leadership has transformed AUB. He has led it through the third worst economic collapse since the mid-19th century, the August 4, 2020, Beirut port explosion, the pandemic, and the 2023-24 war on Lebanon. Under his leadership, AUB has forged strong partnerships and enhanced its global reputation as a mission-driven university. In March 2024, the Board of Trustees voted “unanimously and with great enthusiasm” to appoint President Khuri to a third five-year appointment, extending his presidency through 2030.
Since Khuri became president, AUB has restored academic tenure, tripled the amount of financial assistance awarded to AUB students, and diversified the student body by attracting outstanding students from across Africa and Asia. He has recruited and empowered inclusive and brave senior leadership teams.
Other highlights include Khuri’s leadership of the BOLDLY AUB fundraising campaign (2017-24), which raised more than $805 million for university priorities; the implementation of a tobacco-free policy at AUB (2018); establishing an independent nursing school (2018); setting up more than a dozen schools for Syrian refugees and securing electronic medical records for 15,000 refugees (2018); relaunching the Worldwide Alumni Association of the American University of Beirut (WAAAUB), the university’s global alumni association (2019); the adoption of VITAL 2030, a new campus master plan and strategic plan for the university (2019); launching AUB Online (2020); opening the American University of Beirut – Mediterraneo in Pafos, Cyprus, AUB’s first twin campus outside Lebanon (2023); securing the Keserwan Medical Center, AUB’s first community hospital, in Jounieh, Lebanon (2024); establishing an AUB office in Latin America; and announcing AUB’s 8th faculty, the School of Computing and Data Sciences (2025).
Khuri also enhanced and revised national cancer guidelines for Lebanon (2018) and 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.
Dr. Khuri came to AUB from the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia where he was appointed to the Frances Kelly Blomeyer Chair (2002) and the Roberto C. Goizueta Chair in translational research (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-inchief of Cancer, the oldest and one of the most prestigious journals in the field. Prior to joining Emory, Dr. Khuri was a faculty member at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, from 1995 until 2002.
Khuri has 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. In 2025, he was elected on the first ballot to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the most prestigious and the oldest honorary societies in the US. Khuri was also named one of the 100 most influential people in oncology in 2025 by OncoDaily, a media platform dedicated to cancer research, clinical practice, innovation, and oncology leadership.