Biography:

Nidhal Guessoum is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at San Diego (USA) and spent two years as a researcher at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. He has had an ongoing collaboration with colleagues at the Centre dEtude Spatiale des Rayonnements in Toulouse, France.

In addition to his technical research, he has also been active in the fields of curriculum development and the dissemination of Science, publishing dozens of articles on general science issues, editing a conference proceedings volume, and co-authoring two general public books, The Determination of Lunar Crescent Months and the Islamic Calendar (two editions) and The Story of the Universe (three editions), both in Arabic. Lately, Prof. Guessoum has been very active in the area of the Islam-Science interface, publishing a number of articles and a book on Islam and modern science in French (Presses de la Renaissance, 2009).

Professor Guessoum has been a member of the Paris-based Science and Religion in Islam project; he took an active part in the 2008 conference on Science, Cultures and the Future of Humanity, which was held in Doha, Qatar; he recently gave two invited lecture series at Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison and been interviewed by several prominent media, e.g. BBC World Radio, Al-Jazeera, Le Monde, NPR (USA), RFI (France), etc.

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