The American University in Cairo’s provost has established a new series of lectures at the university which will provide AUC professors with the opportunity to showcase their research and scholarship to faculty and students at AUC, as well as the Egyptian community at large. Provost Lisa Anderson noted that AUC’s faculty includes prominent scholars from around the world and that much of the research taking place by the faculty is being recognized globally. “Our faculty,” Anderson said, “are doing world class research in a variety of fields and this is an opportunity to showcase those research activities to the wider community here in Cairo. We hope that this begins a series of dialogues with the bigger society which we are part of. We would like it to be reciprocal, so that people would not only get the chance to see our faculty, but they would also be able to follow up with their research.”
Each semester, the provost will host four lectures – three in English and one in Arabic. For the Spring semester 2010, the faculty who have been selected to deliver the lectures are Ambassador Nabil Fahmy, founding dean of AUC’s School of Global Affairs and Public Policy; Professor Galal Amin, professor of economics and renowned author; Professor Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology and leading scholar in Egyptian funerary archaeology; and Professor Ali Hadi, vice provost and professor of mathematics and actuarial science.
Ambassador Fahmy’s lecture - The Arab-Israeli Conflict and Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East: Are They Intractable Problems - will be held on March 1. In the lecture he will discuss how the Arab - Israeli conflict and the pursuit of nuclear weapons in the Middle East are becoming more entrenched even while their respective resolutions become clearer and self-evident. He will also explain why it has been difficult to find resolutions on these issues and what can be done to address them.
The second lecture - Reflections on the Idea of Progress – will be held on March 21 and will be delivered by Professor Amin. In the lecture, which will be delivered in Arabic, he will discuss how in spite of the many, and recurring criticisms of Western Civilization, the idea of progress has proved to be highly resistant and continues to dominate our view of political and social change.
Life Away from the Nile: Exploring Kharga Oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert will be the third lecture of the series, held on April 6 and delivered by Professor Ikram. In her lecture she will provide an overview of the new discoveries made by AUC’s archaeological project the North Kharga Oasis Survey, which is investigating the evident archaeological remains in the northern area of the Kharga Oasis.
The final lecture by Professor Hadi - Visualizing Data Beyond Three-Dimensions: An Introduction to the Visualization of Massive, High-Dimensional Data – will be held on May 5 and will introduce efficient and effective graphs for the visualization of massive and high-dimensional data, which are hard to visualize due to human visualization ability, which is limited to three-dimensional spaces and to the limitations inherited in the existing visualization tools.
All four lectures will be held in Moataz Al Alfi Hall at AUC New Cairo at 4:00 pm and all lectures will include simultaneous translation.
The American University in Cairo (AUC) was founded 90 years ago and is major contributor to the social, political and cultural life of the Arab Region. It is a vital bridge between East and West, linking Egypt and the region to the world through scholarly research, partnerships with academic and research institutions, and study abroad programs. An independent, nonprofit, apolitical, non-sectarian and equal opportunity institution, AUC is fully accredited in Egypt and the United States.
