Prof. Anthoine Zahlan (Lebanon)

Anthoine Zahlan holds a doctorate degree in Chemical Physics and served as Professor of Physics at the American University of Beirut (1956–1975). During this time he served as Chairman of the department and developed a program leading to the Ph.D in Physics. In 1969 he was Co-founder and first Director of the Royal Scientific Society in Jordan, and in 1973 was also Co-founder and first Director of Arab Projects and Development (APD), a private, non-profit consulting firm specialized in science policy and system engineering. APD was based in Beirut and operated across the region. Dr. Zahlan has been a staff member of the Physics Departments of Stanford University and University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, United States, as well as a Senior Visiting Fellow of the Science Policy Unit at the University of Sussex, UK. Dr. Zahlan has worked extensively in a number of fields including manpower planning, institution building, institutional efficiency, the brain drain, technology transfer, and science policy with an emphasis on the construction sector and agriculture. He has organized some ten international conferences in these fields and has served as a consultant to a number of organizations; these include various Arab governments, the economic department of the League of Arab States,  United Nations Secretariat in New York, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),  International Labor Organization (ILO), Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the World Bank, among others. Dr. Zahlan has published 25 volumes and some 160 papers on different areas of science, technology and science policy, and has continuously reviewed and published articles on the state of science and technology in the Arab world since 1967.