American University of Beirut (Lebanon)

Yousif Asfour

Dr. Yousif Asfour is an experienced CIO and technology executive with more than 30 years of experience in the US and Middle East.

He is an experienced and dynamic leader who has successfully helped several organizations in the higher education, government, transportation, technology and finance sectors build and sustain their competitive advantage by leading high performing IT teams through the design, implementation, deployment and operations of innovative products, services, applications & infrastructure.

Dr. Asfour is based in Beirut, Lebanon where he is currently serving as the Chief Information Officer at the American University of Beirut where he is leading the transformation of the information technology department into a strategic partner with the academic units.

Prior to AUB, Dr. Asfour served as Chief Information Officer for New York University Abu Dhabi and then as Associate Vice President, Global Technology Services for New York University where he led the design of the new campus, and the design, implementation and operations of IT services across three different locations.

He also served as chairman of the IT department at the American University in Dubai where he led revamping the curriculum and getting it accredited by SACS and the UAE Ministry of Higher Education, and as Director of the Injazat Institute, where he founded an executive leadership consulting and development subsidiary of Injazat Data Systems,
Dr. Asfour has also held several executive leadership positions with a number of US-based technology companies, including Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering at Inflow - a managed services start up; Vice President of Engineering at dbDoctor - a software development company, and several consulting and engineering positions at Symmetrix, Sapient and Digital Equipment Corporation.

Dr. Asfour received a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from Northeastern University and a Ph.D. in cognitive and neural systems from Boston University. In addition to several publications in professional journals, Dr. Asfour also holds a patent related to fast data transfer for multi-processor systems.