An academic leader and a scholar of Islamic studies. He is the first Arab-American to serve as President of The American University in Cairo (AUC), a role he took on in 2021. Prior to this, he served as the dean of Georgetown University in Qatar and the provost of the American University of Beirut (AUB). He also held professorial positions at Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown, where he chaired the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies. Before his career in academia, he worked as a mechanical engineer after earning his bachelor's degree from AUB. He later earned his MA, MPhil, and PhD in Islamic studies from Columbia University.