Nidhal Guessoum

Nidhal GuessoumCourtesy Global Space and Satellite Forum

Nidhal Guessoum is an astrophysicist. He obtained his PhD (and MSc) from the University of California at San Diego (USA) and spent several extended periods as a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He has also had long on-going collaborations with French colleagues, resulting in many papers, mostly in gamma-ray astrophysics. He is currently Professor and Associate Dean at the American University of Sharjah, UAE.

In addition to his technical papers, Prof. Guessoum has published many articles on issues related to science, education, the Arab world, and Islam, and authored or co-authored several books, including: The Story of the Universe – from primitive conceptions to the Big Bang (in Arabic, 4 editions) and Islam’s Quantum Question - Reconciling Muslim Tradition and Modern Science (IB Tauris, 2011).

He also writes regularly on the above subjects, for Gulf News and other venues. In July 2011 he was featured in a full-page article in Science, and in June 2013 he published a 4-page commentary in Nature about astronomy in the Arab world, past, present, and future.

Finally, he has lectured at many renowned universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Cornell, Wisconsin) and has been interviewed in various international media, including Al-Jazeera, BBC, NPR, The Times, France 2, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Fox News, etc.