The AUB Aerosol Research Lab is home to an interdisciplinary research group with backgrounds in aerosol dynamics, biochemistry, combustion, computational fluid dynamics,  instrumentation, and controls. We produce policy-relevant science with thematic focuses on tobacco smoke, urban and indoor air pollution and its sources, and atmospheric aerosol volatility. We collaborate widely with research groups at AUB and around the world. Several novel instruments for waterpipe tobacco smoking research have been developed at the lab, including a waterpipe smoking topography device, an in-situ real-time sampling device for waterpipe smoke analysis, and a tobacco-smoking robot that can mimic human puffing behavior in detail resolved to 100 ms. Several of our instruments are used by researchers in Southwest Asia, Europe, and the USA.

The lab was founded in 2002 by Mechanical Engineering professor Alan Shihadeh with 5,000 USD startup funding. Since then it has benefitted from research awards from the US National Institutes of Health, Research for International Tobacco Control (IDRC), the Lebanese Council for Scientific Research, and the AUB University Research Board. Since 2007 the lab has operated in a 50 m² space in the Science Research Building of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at AUB. It is equipped with a variety of particle sampling, sizing, and generation instruments as well as laminar and plug-flow thermodenuders and a 1 m³ well-stirred reactor. The lab has access to GC-MS, HPLC-MS, and ICP-MS instruments in shared AUB facilities and benefits from close proximity to machine and electronics shops.