Prof. Phani Tej Adidam 

Dr. Phani Tej Adidam is the Ward Y. and George T. Lindley Professor of Business Administration; Chairman and Professor of the Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship; and Director, Center of International Business Initiatives in the College of Business Administration at University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). He served as a Fulbright Scholar at Management Center Innsbruck, Austria in 2022-23 and a Fulbright Specialist in Eastern University, Sri Lanka in 2025.

Dr. Adidam received his MBA from the Institute of Management Technology in India, and Ph.D. from Texas Tech University. In December 2022, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Faculty of Commerce, Banaras Hindu University, India. In August 2024, Dr. Adidam was bestowed with the University of Nebraska-System’s highest teaching award – Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award. At UNO, Dr. Adidam is a recipient of the University-wide Excellence in Teaching Award, and the UNO Alumni Outstanding Award for Excellence in Teaching. He was the first recipient of UNO’s prestigious Faculty Excellence in Global Engagement Award. In the past twenty years, Dr. Adidam has received UNO’s Executive MBA’s Distinguished Professor of the Year eight times. He is also a recipient of the Dean’s Citation for Excellence in Teaching award (twice); the Chairperson’s Teaching Excellence award; and the Outstanding MBA Professor of the Year. Dr. Adidam teaches sales, brand, marketing and management strategies in the MBA, Executive MBA, and BSBA programs. Dr. Adidam has been invited to teach at more than 12 business schools around the world. His research has been published in several leading academic journals – Journal of Marketing; Journal of International Marketing; Journal of Marketing Management; Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, among others. Prior to joining academics, Dr. Adidam consulted with several large and medium companies based in India, Singapore, and Europe on strategies for developing and implementing marketing executive information systems.

Prof. Paurav Shukla

Biography
Paurav Shukla is the Professor of Marketing and the head of Management & Marketing Group at the Essex Business School, University of Essex, UK. His research interests include cross-cultural marketing, comparative consumer behaviour, and marketing in emerging markets with a particular focus on luxury brands. Paurav’s career began in industry, and he continues to work hand in hand with industry as a researcher, practitioner and advisor. Previously he has held academic positions at Glasgow Caledonian University (UK), University of Brighton (UK), Liverpool Hope University (UK), Gujarat Law Society (India) and corporate organizations including 7th Sense Consulting (UK & India), Scanpoint Graphics (India), Claris Lifesciences (India) among others. He also holds visiting professorship at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Germany, Aalto University, Finland, Misr International University, Egypt, among others. He has also delivered corporate training, teaching and consulting assignments for organizations in Europe, Asia and Africa, and has been actively involved in funded research projects. He is currently working on several client projects involving large scale comparative datasets. He has directly taught students representing more than 60 nationalities and been one of the pioneers in e-teaching methods wherein he employs cutting edge web and social media technologies in his teaching approach. His website www.pauravshukla.com gets more than 20,000 hits per month globally. He has written widely in the areas of his research domain in top-tier journals including Journal of Business Research, Journal of World Business, Marketing Letters, Information & Management, International Marketing Review, Psychology & Marketing, Alcohol & Alcoholism, Eating behaviours, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Advances in Consumer Research, Journal of Entrepreneurship, and Journal of Product & Brand Management among others. He is an expert in quantitative techniques including structural equation modeling and complex land and field experiments and has also published papers using mixed methods approach. He has contributed chapters to edited books, case studies and popular accounts of his work have appeared in the Sunday Times, the Guardian, Woman’s Wear Daily (the fashion bible), Luxury Society, Newsweek, National Post of Canada and LiveMint Wall Street Journal, among others. He has been involved as a guest editor for journals, conference chair, and track chair for prestigious conferences such as EMAC. He is also on the editorial and review boards of several renowned conferences and journals.

Professor Naser Al Sherif

Biography

• Alsharif received his Ph.D. from Creighton University Medical Center (CUMC) in Pharmacology/Toxicology, 1992; M.S. degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), 1988 and Pharm.D. from UNMC, 1987, in Omaha, Nebraska, USA
• He served as the Associate Director of the Distance Pharmacy Pathway (2001-2006) and as the coordinator for international relations for the Middle East & India. Since 1995, he coordinated exchange visits by students and faculty from China, Egypt, England, Jordan, Sweden, and South Korea and finalized several memorandums of understanding.
• Alsharif was acknowledged by his students for winning outstanding teacher awards and by his colleagues in the school of pharmacy and health professions by winning scholarly, teaching and service awards.
• He was the recipient of Creighton University John P. Schlegel Diversity Award for Excellence and Innovation (2013) and the Distinguished Educator in Teaching as Scholarship (2014). He was the recipient of the Alexander J and Martha H. Frost Faculty Endowment Fund for Excellence in the Classroom (2019).
• He is well published in the areas of toxicity of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, distance education, scholarship of teaching and learning in teaching medicinal chemistry and clinical toxicology and in the use of technology, health care disparities and cultural competency, health, and healing practice of people of faith, provider bias and global pharmacy education.
• He is a certified immunizer and an immunization trainer. He has practiced as an on-call and part-time pharmacist for >20 year at five local hospitals and precepted hundreds of students.
• Alsharif has been a member of the International Pharmaceutical Federation since 2015 and the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) since 1995.  He is a winner of the AACP Innovation in Teaching Award Competition, 2000, 2006 and received an honorable mention for the same Award in 2002 and 2004. In 2016, he received the inaugural Distinguished Teaching Scholar Award from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP). In 2018, he received the inaugural Outstanding Service Award from the AACP Global Pharmacy Education Special Interest Group and in 2020 from the Health Disparities and Cultural Competency Special Interest Group.
• Alsharif served as a member of evaluation teams for the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) International Services. He also served as a visiting professor, consultant, coordinator for strategic planning and as an external assessor at several universities in the Arab world including Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Palestine, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. Dr. Alsharif was also invited as a plenary speaker and presenter at several local, national and international conferences.
• In Feb 2022, he fulfilled his dream to come back to the Arab World and serve on a full-time basis. He accepted a position of Dean at the Lebanese American University, the only ACPE accredited school of pharmacy outside the USA.  The last 2 ½ years have been one of the most uplifting experiences of his career despite the fact Lebanon is experiencing the perfect storm with economic, political, and social challenges on top of a devastating pandemic. Despite the challenges, great efforts were made to enhance the morale and wellness of faculty, staff, and students including inspirational speakers, potlucks, hikes, workshops webinars sport, pharmacy has talent, Karaoke night; establishing a culture of interprofessional sensitivity “working with and for each other”, demonstrating respect for the contributions of each member of the SOP family; enhanced faculty submissions for grants resulting in increased publications; lead the IPE and IPC culture at the school and our medical centers; established several MOUs with NGOs, Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, a new MoU was signed with the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC)-College of Pharmacy to have LAU PharmD students complete their required Advance Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPEs; coordinated with the MOPH their First Annual Pharmacovigilance Conference, Lead; coordinated the First Annual Lebanese Schools of Pharmacy Symposium: United in Action: Pharmacy Education and Practice Advancement. The SOP under his leadership led the efforts to establish a Pharmaceutical and Medical Research Center (PMRC) to conduct bioequivalence and clinical research. MoUs with several of the local pharmaceutical companies to conduct their bioequivalence studies in the PMRC were signed. A $105,000 funding from CVS to support different activities at the SOP and $100,000 Corporate Grant to remodel the dispensing were obtained. Great efforts were spent to energize the SOP alumni on a professional and personal level, holding an alumni reunion, end of year gathering, dinners at professional pharmacy conferences in the US and re-energizing the alumni chapter.

Dr. Alsharif was very active in the Omaha community in interfaith dialogue and in educating the public, politicians, academia, businesses, and faith groups about, Arabs, Muslims, Arab-Christians, Arab Americans, Islam, Palestine, and the rights of Palestinian People. He is also a football coach (D license) and a state, high-school, and college football referee. He continues to advocate interfaith dialogue in Lebanon and coaching football.

Dr. Ebtesam Ahmed

Dr. Ebtesam Ahmed is a Clinical Professor at the Department of Clinical Health Professions,College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, St. John’s University, New YorkShe is also the Director of the Pharmacy Internship for the MJHS Institute for Innovation in Palliative Care. Dr. Ahmed earned her Doctorate of Pharmacy (PharmD) from St. John’s University and completed a post-graduate pharmacy residency at the University of California, San Francisco. She also holds a Master’s degree in Bioethics from Columbia University. Dr. Ahmed has been extensively teaching globally to pharmacists, physicians and healthcare professionals. She also conducted numerous training workshops for pharmacists in Egypt, Guatemala and Kyrgyzstan. She has given presentations at national and international medical conferences about pain management, palliative care, ethics and end-of-life care. She has a particular interest in the role of pharmacists in palliative care and global access to controlled substances for pain management. She is a board member of the International Association of Hospice and Palliative Care and a member of the World Health Organization EMRO Regional Palliative Care Expert Network.

Professor Shaun T. Schafer

Dr. Shaun T. Schafer, Ph.D., is the Associate Vice President of Curriculum, Academic Effectiveness, and Policy Development at Metropolitan University of Denver. He previously served as the chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Production and the president of the Council of Chairs and Directors. He joined MSU Denver in 2006 as an affiliate faculty member, and has since been a visiting assistant professor, assistant professor, associate professor, and he became a full professor in Fall 2017. Along the way he has served on college curriculum committees in Letters, Arts, and Sciences and in Professional Studies, chaired the CPS committee, spent one and a half years as Faculty Associate to the Dean of CPS for curriculum, and chaired more than two dozen screening committees.

Shaun holds a bachelor’s in Journalism/News Editorial from the University of Oklahoma, a Master’s in Educational Leadership Studies from Oklahoma State University, and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Colorado State University. He was lucky enough to work in journalism for 20 years, starting as an intern at the Kansas City Business Journal. He also worked at newspapers and news syndicates in Chicago, San Francisco, Fort Smith, Arkansas, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Brisbane and Sydney, Australia.

He made the move to begin teaching after several years of working with interns at the Tulsa World and serving as the newspaper adviser at the University of Tulsa. It was his belief that he could help mold the next generation of journalists if he just got to them a little earlier in their educational careers.

While active learning spaces are critical to Shaun, he would like to make them even more active. His ideal course would be one taught while hiking, preferably on one of Colorado’s 54 “Fourteeners,” those peaks higher than 14,000 feet. An avid hiker, Shaun has done 14 of the “Fourteeners” and he continues to plan additional treks each year. One of his dream hikes is to travel from summit to summit on the Sangre De Cristo mountains in southern Colorado.

Professor Bilal Al-Nawas

Professor Bilal Al-Nawas is Chairman of the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Plastic Surgery Department of the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. He is also an international faculty member at Kyung Hee University School of Dentistry, Seoul, Korea
He graduated in Dentistry and Medicine and has been affiliated to the University of Mainz for more than 15 years. His clinical and scientific focus in dental implantology is clinical studies and basic research. His clinical work fields are compromised patients with risk factors or local bone deficiency, head and neck oncology and cleft reconstructions.
He is the editor-in chief of the Journal of Dental Implantology ZZI Clinical Oral Implants Research. He is the Officer for Infection Control and QM of the German Society of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery ( DGMKG).
He is also the former president of the International Federation of Dental Anesthesiology Societies (IFDAS) and Education Officer of the German Society of Implantology (DGI). He is a member of the Osteology Expert Council. He is a Fellow of the ITI Section Germany, Education Delegate and Head of the Research Committee and Member of the ITI Board.