“Architecturally, we have a campus that has been recognized internationally for its sustainability features and practices. We should continue to use these features as educational tools for our students,” said Sherif Goubran ’14 is assistant professor in the Department of Architecture.
Unlike green or ecological design, sustainable design is a broader paradigm that encompasses the social, environmental, economic and cultural dimensions. A good definition of sustainable design combines the meanings of both design and sustainability. Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman define design as a process for identifying and creating the “what can be” and “what should be” of a situation, where the designer would explore how to better a situation. John Ehrenfeld defines sustainability as the condition where the environment, people and other beings can flourish. So, in a sense, sustainable design is about attempting to create the ideal conditions for this flourishing to occur.
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Students and alumni engage with the digital future through AUC’s VR lab.
Hesham Ismail ’04, ’07 wanted to document an afternoon riding electric scooters with his wife in downtown Los Angeles, California, but he couldn’t take his hands off the handlebars to reach for his phone. Instead, he said, “Hey Facebook, take a video!” and the Ray-Ban sunglasses he was wearing began to record.
Smart glasses like the Ray-Ban Stories — a partnership between the eyewear company and Meta — are becoming a reality, thanks to engineers like Ismail. The AUC grad is an engineering manager on the Developer Infrastructure team of Meta’s Reality Labs. In layman’s terms, his team provides the tools and lays the foundation that helps other engineers develop Ray-Ban Stories, along with Oculus Quest VR headsets and Meta’s Metaverse.
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A comic character developed by an AUC student to raise public health awareness is becoming an official pharmaceutical mascot.
While working as an intern at Alexandria University hospital, Sara Nasr, a graduate student at AUC’s Institute of Global Health and Human Ecology (I-GHHE), witnessed constant misfortunes. However, the young physician-in-training found herself particularly touched by the stories of children suffering from hemophilia.
“Not only were they burdened with their sickness, but they also had to deal with the way the community views them,” Nasr explained.
Hemophilia is a rare bleeding disorder commonly caused by missing or defective factor VIII (8), a clotting protein found in blood. Due to the stigma attached to the disorder, many children suffering from hemophilia are kept under strict surveillance and have their activities limited for fear of injury. Nasr noted that some parents were even afraid to touch their children.
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Students are rethinking traditional concepts in designing architectural plans for a green town in Egypt.
On a windy afternoon in February, AUC students from the Urban Design and Landscape Architecture course, taught by Momen El-Husseiny, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture, piled out of a bus and onto the sandy grounds of Mostakbal (Future) City — one of Cairo’s up-and-coming satellite cities located in the desert about 55 kilometers east of Tahrir Square.
Humming with a mixture of excitement and confusion, the students looked around at the barren lot that would soon be home to one group’s masterplan for Egypt’s first-of-its-kind college town, Bloomfields.
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Human-centered design thinking approach is a core part of the AUC educational experience.
By integrating design thinking into the curriculum, AUC is teaching students to approach complicated problems with a sense of empathy, creativity and resilience, explained Hoda Mostafa, professor of practice and director of the University’s Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT).
Design thinking is a methodology used by Fortune 500 companies, including Apple and J.P. Morgan, to transform their way of operating and develop innovative, customer-centric products and services. International development institutions, such as the World Food Programme and UNESCO, have employed it to create policies and programs that effectively address poverty, gender inequality and other complex global challenges.
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Bringing technology to life carries with it privacy and societal implications.
Here are some of the technologies AUC students have contributed to in just the last several years: a self-navigating wheelchair, applications that route traffic more intelligently and a smart mirror capable of determining a person’s vitals.
Sherif Aly ’96, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, pointed out that this is only the beginning when it comes to pervasive computing systems enabled by artificial intelligence. “Years of innovation could be happening in days by virtue of how fast those kinds of systems are thinking and innovating,” Aly said. “It’s very likely that you start seeing stuff that showed up in science fiction movies turning yet again into science facts. You could be literally wearing your VR headset and say, ‘Hey Meta, can you replay memories of my fifth birthday with my friends?’”
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Launched last week, AUC’s Climate Change Initiative capitalizes on AUC’s contributions to national and international efforts in tackling one of the greatest challenges of our time. The initiative includes research, student activities, teaching and learning, outreach, tracking and reducing our carbon footprint, writing school textbooks on climate change and providing climate change solutions in specific contexts within the country.
“Our aim in this initiative is to reinforce AUC’s role as an active academic hub on climate change and sustainable development in Egypt and the region, as well as an active contributor to global efforts addressing climate change challenges,” said President Ahmad Dallal. “Of course, COP27, hosted in Egypt in November, provides an incentive to catalyze AUC’s climate change initiative.”
Dallal outlined the initiative’s five main areas of focus that are fully aligned with national and regional climate change and sustainability priorities:
These areas of focus also overlap with a number of “cross-cutting issues” ––adaptation to climate change, resilience of communities, mitigation measures, education and a just transition –– that are relevant to Asia and the region. “We encourage a multidisciplinary approach in addressing challenges, including policy, regulatory frameworks, financing, scientific research and social science aspects,” said Dallal.
UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for Egypt and Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund Mahmoud Mohieldin, who was the keynote speaker at the event, highlighted five distinctive features of COP27, which AUC will participate in next fall:
“We cannot ignore poverty, hunger, job creation and an inclusive approach to the whole [climate change] agenda, including the impact of climate change on children, youth and women."
“We don’t need new frameworks; we just need to apply what we have. If there is a good idea, let’s projectize it. You [AUC] have good ideas, and you have been teaching about them, so [the focus now is] how to apply them on your scale, with the hope that this could be scaled up or replicated somewhere else.”
“This is a very practical approach based on a country-platform design, with five regional roundtables [across the world] – and I’m inviting you to participate in any capacity you wish. … It’s not just about Egypt and the local community. It’s about the region, Arab countries, the Mediterranean, Africa and beyond.”
“It’s not about the competition; it’s about [showcasing] the talents and skills in the governorates, and it’s a chance to demonstrate what they’re doing. … It is customary for rich countries to host big conferences to be attended by 30,000 plus participants, [including] heads of state, but ordinary people would always wonder, ‘What's in it for us? Why do we have this conference?’ And this is legitimate.”
“Without finance and investments, without the resources available to us –– not just financial resources, but technology and knowledge [as well] – nothing will really progress, and many of these ideas may end up with frustration. There will be some serious discussion about [funding] opportunities."
