Biography:

Elias Baydoun was educated at the University of Jordan, Amman (BS 1971), the American University of Beirut (AUB; MS 1977), and the University of Cambridge where he obtained his MPhil in 1978, and PhD in 1980. Currently, he is Professor of Biology at AUB, Secretary General and Founding Fellow of the Arab Academy of Sciences and Adjunct Professor at the University of Petra in Jordan. Previous positions included: Chairman of Biology (1978�1993) and Associate Professor at AUB; Associate Professor, Assistant President (1983�1986), Director of Planning and Development (1985/1986), and Director of Personnel (1985/1986) at Yarmouk University, Jordan. His awards include: Federation of Arab Scientific Research Councils Award, Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Young Arab Scientists for Biology, AUB Research Award in Natural Sciences (twice), Distinguished Scholar Award of the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, Developing World Study Award of the Royal Society UK and TWAS�ARO Regional Prize for Public Understanding and Popularization of Science. He is Fellow of several learned societies including the Institute of Biology (London), TWAS, Islamic World Academy of Sciences and the Arab Academy of Sciences.

He organized and chaired 18 international conferences on topics related to the development of the Arab Middle East Region. His research interests include membrane and carbohydrate biology, biotransformation, nanotechnology, and medicinal plants. Professor Baydoun supervised and served on the committees of 60 PhD and MSc students. He has published over 80 articles in international refereed journals, and over 100 abstracts and papers in the proceedings of international conferences, as well as authoring several biology textbooks for secondary schools and community colleges. He is the first inventor of a patent on treatment of protozoal diseases (US Patent 9,173,888). He translated into Arabic a university textbook in biochemistry and was the General Coordinator of the four volumes of the Arabic Encyclopaedia on Knowledge for Sustainable Development published by UNESCO. He is the editor of the books Water, Energy and Food Sustainability in the Middle East: The Sustainability Triangle and Universities in the Arab World: An Urgent Need for Change published by Springer, and a member of the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports, a journal from Nature Publishing Group. He served as Consultant for several local, regional, and international organizations including UNESCO and UNEP.

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