CEE Participating in 4th FEA Student Conference

Participation in the 4th FEA Student Conference (May 26-27, 2005) by the CEE department included the presentation of two keynote lectures and one student paper published in the conference proceedings.

Keynote Lectures

Engineers and Science Parks
By Dr. Kamal A. Shair (on behalf of FEA)
Senior Partner and Managing Director, Dar Al-Handasah (Shair & Partners), Lebanon
Invited to the Conference and presented with the Distinguished Alumnus Award

Abstract: We live in an era in which innovation and the utilization of knowledge are central to development, and in which much depends on being smart. University institutions have a key role to play and engineers and designers are central in the process of forming business enterprises to forge progress. A celebrated example of the role of the engineer in establishing a highly successful development is the initiative of Fred Terman, Dean of Engineering at Stanford in the 1950s, which initiated the development of Silicon Valley in California.
Terman’s vision was to establish a scholarly community extending beyond the university to encompass knowledge-intensive business enterprises that would develop and thrive with continual interaction with others in the community. Silicon Valley became an economic development phenomenon spawning hundreds of thousands of high quality jobs, world changing technologies, and some of the most dynamic global business enterprises of the last half century. It also demonstrated the science park’s role as an instrument of development in the knowledge economy.
Science parks have promoted development and created dynamic development poles in some of the most successful emerging economies. The paper suggests that AUB and the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture have a significant contribution to make to extending initiatives to develop and operate science parks and incubate knowledge based enterprise in Lebanon. Such an initiative would contribute significantly to the national development effort and to fulfilling the aspirations that this university prepares its graduates to aspire to.

Contracting in the Construction Industry: Challenges and Opportunities
By Mr. Mahmoud Abdul Baki (on behalf of CEE)
Group Vice President, Consolidated Contractors Co. (C.C.C)
Invited at the Conference and presented with Distinguished Alumnus Award

Abstract: The speech is about the Construction Industry in the Middle East and other areas where the Consolidated Contractors Company (C.C.C.) operates, e.g. Middle East, Africa, Caribbean, Central America. I will also try to give guidelines to the graduating students on how to develop and prepare themselves in the complex field of contracting.

Student Paper

Analysis of “Shared Taxi” Traffic Operations Using GPS-Based Data Acquisition and Traffic Microsimulation
By Joe Mattar, Frederic Kassardjian and Elie Daccache
Undergraduate Students, CEE Department, AUB