About

Welcome

After returning to Egypt in fall of 2008, I was heavily involved in improving the undergraduate curriculum and in teaching physics courses on undergraduate and graduate levels (MS and PhD) in the Physics Department of Ain Shams University, largest public university in Egypt.

I joined the physics department of the American University in Cairo (AUC), a liberal arts private university, as a full time visiting assistant professor in 2012 till 2020 (on leave from Ain Shams University). At AUC, besides teaching and research, I was heavily involved in physics curriculum development and programs improvement.

Teaching and Services

Students learning has been one of my main focus since I returned home. In parallel with making a series of comparative analyses to improve the curriculum at AUC and to make it aligned with the physics curricula of leading US institutions, I focused on improving the way physics courses are taught using the findings of physics education research (PER) literature.

Between 2018 and 2019 I coordinated the changes of converting the freshman PHYS I course (calculus-based freshman mechanics) into a Studio-Like format, where I have written +20 experimental activities directly connected to the central concepts of the course.

In the last two years I became concerned with issues of inclusion and the challenges that STEM students with special needs face. Last summer I started an initiative to document past experiences with STEM students with special needs and to modify freshman physics experiments to accommodate them. This is the first step to seed the changes needed to address these challenges and attempt to find solutions.

I was the chair of the Teaching Effectiveness Committee (2017-2020) and the Curriculum Committee (2014-2020).

Research

Despite the heavy teaching and services loads, I managed to graduate two MS students. My research group has grown from 2 graduate students and 1 undergrad student (in 2016) to 9 grad students and 3 undergrad students (today). Besides my interests in particle physics, my research interests have expanded beyond my PhD work, where now they span diverse topics in physics education, and gravitational physics.

Got questions?

• If you are interested in pursuing a physics degree at AUC, the department of physics offers BS and MS degrees only (No PhD in physics). There are 2 tracks for the BS in physics, one in pure physics, and the other is in Solar Energy. There is also the double major option, where in addition to your primary science major you can do a physics major. If you have questions, please contact Dr. Karim Addas, the associate chair (kaddas at aucegypt dot edu).

• For questions about the graduate program, please contact Dr. Ahmed Hamed, the graduate director (ahmed.mhamed at aucegypt dot edu)