Dr. Najjar is an Associate Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He received his B.E. (Civil Engineering) and M.E. (Structural Engineering) degrees from AUB in the years 1999 and 2001. He earned his Ph.D. in Geotechnical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005, under the supervision of Professor Robert Gilbert. Dr. Najjar’s research interests center around reliability-based design and risk management in geotechnical engineering with special emphasis on applications related to the design and testing of offshore foundations and pipelines, shallow and deep foundation systems, soil and site improvement, in addition to asphalt pavements.