Meet Our Professors
3rd QIA Workshops Series (Fall 2024)
Our Professors
Fuad Farooqi
Area head
Teaching professor of finance
Workshop Director
Professor Muhammad Fuad Farooqi is the area head of the Business Administration program and an associate teaching professor of finance at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. He conducts his research in the areas of Islamic finance, with a focus on the banking sector, and financial technology. Professor Farooqi’s research has been looking at the application of the Blockchain technology to a Triple Entry Accounting System. The research has implications for the way firms record and report their financial statements, as it allows for greater transparency and a reduced need for costly audit resources.
Iman Adeinat
associate teaching professor of
operations management
Workshop Director
Workshop: Project Management
Professor Adeinat holds a PhD in Engineering Management and MSc in Engineering Management from the University of New Orleans and a Bachelor Degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Jordan. Iman holds The Project Management Professional (PMP) certificated and is a certified associate of Project Management (CAPM) through the Project Management Institute (PMI). In addition, she is a Six Sigma Black Belt Master. Her publication interests encompass service quality, operations research and knowledge management. Iman began her career as a knowledge management engineer at Petra Engineering Industries (a commercial and industrial HVAC equipment manufacturer in Jordan) and a project manager for the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response, and Technology (USA).
Serkan Akguc
associate teaching professor of finance
Workshop: Financial Modeling
Professor Akguc holds a PhD degree in Finance from Temple University’s Fox School of Business in Pennsylvania, a Master of Arts Degree in Financial Economics from the University of Maine in the state of Maine; a Master of Arts Degree in Economics from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee; and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Prior to joining the faculty of CMU-Q, he taught several classes in Finance at Vanderbilt University and Temple University in the U.S. and King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia both at undergraduate and graduate level. His research interests include empirical corporate finance, ownership structure of firms, private equity, and start-up valuation.
Hussein Fadlallah
assistant teaching professor of management
Workshop: Leadership
Professor Hussein Fadlallah holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from York University in Canada, an MBA from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and a BEng in Computer and Communications Engineering from the American University of Beirut. In conjunction with the academic background, his professional experience in consulting and within several industries spans a wide range of roles, functions, and geographies across the Middle East, Europe, and North America. His research focuses on corporate strategy and the related drivers of sustainable competitive advantage, corporate responsibility and sustainability, and the impact of digitalization on strategy and business models.
Ki-Won Haan
assistant teaching professor of organizational behavior
Workshop: Negotiation
Professor Haan holds Ph.D. and M.S. in Organizational Behavior at Tepper School of Business (Carnegie Mellon University). Prior to beginning his career in academia, he served as intelligence officer for three years in various government agencies, including the United Nations Command/Korea-US Combined Forces Command, Office of the President, and Ministry of National Defense. His research revolves around the topics of team composition, communication, and negotiation, driven by the question of how people can build better ideas together within teams. He collaborates with institutions across diverse industries, including financial services and healthcare.
Agustín Indaco
Assistant teaching professor of economics
Workshop: Advanced Excel
Professor Indaco holds a Ph.D. in Economics from CUNY, The Graduate Center. His research interests lie at the intersection of applied microeconomics and big data. He is particularly interested in exploring ways in which we can study economic behavior and measure economic outcomes in societies through data collected from social media. Prior to his graduate studies, he was a Junior Professional Associate at The World Bank, where he worked in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management unit for Latin America. He also served as Visiting Faculty at Strelka Institute for The New Normal postgraduate program. He has worked as a consultant for The World Bank and IBM.
Patrick McGinnis
distinguished career teaching professor of business communication
Workshop: Business Presentations
Professor McGinnis has taught business communication at Carnegie Mellon University since 1999. He has taught courses in written, oral, interpersonal and cross-cultural communication at the undergraduate and MBA levels in both Pittsburgh and Doha. As an administrator, he served as the first Program Director/Associate Area Head of the undergraduate business program at CMUQ, holding that position for almost a decade. As a faculty member, he has taught communications to every Business Administration student who has graduated from CMUQ.
Thomas Mitchell
ASsociate teaching Professor of English
Workshop: Business Writing
Professor Mitchell holds a PhD in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He joined the faculty at CMUQ in 2013 and serves as the advisor to the minor in professional writing at CMUQ. He teaches classes in professional and technical writing, argument, and language analysis. His research focuses on genre based pedagogy and he has numerous publications in international journals.
Ryan Riley
associate teaching professor of computer science
Workshop: Cybersecurity
Dr. Ryan Riley holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue University. His area of research is computer systems security, and he publishes work covering a variety of Cybersecurity topics. At Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar he teaches courses covering both the practical and theoretical sides of Cybersecurity.
Veli Safak
Assistant Teaching Professor in Economics
Professor Safak holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Georgetown University. His research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning and financial engineering. He is particularly interested in exploring ways to study the mechanisms behind asset price movements and to consistently predict them using machine learning techniques. Prior to his graduate studies, he was a junior business analyst at the Chamber of Industry in Ankara, Turkey. He also served as a junior researcher at the Experimental Economics Lab at the University of Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey.
Varun Sharma
Assistant Teaching Professor in Marketing
Professor Sharma earned his Ph.D. in Business Administration and Management (Marketing) from Bocconi University, Italy. During this time, he was also a Visiting student at Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, USA and Rotterdam School of Business, Netherlands. He did an MBA from SDA Bocconi, Italy and a Bachelor of Technology in Biotechnology from Thapar University, India. Varun’s research interests include consumer behavior, sensory marketing, price perception, and emotions. Prior to joining academia, Varun worked for five years in the industry, as a Senior Marketing Executive at JISL, India and as a Technology Analyst for Finacle, Infosys, India.
Andrés Castaño Zuluaga
Assistant teaching professor of economics & analytics
Workshop: Business Analytics
Professor Castano holds a Ph.D. in Regional Economics from Cornell University. He teaches business, economics, and analytics courses at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. His research areas include Labor Economics, Economics of Immigration, Regional Economic Impact Analysis, and Applied Econometrics. He is particularly interested in the socioeconomic and fiscal effects of sudden immigration shocks in the developing world on the receiving countries’ labor and housing markets and public finances and in the implementation of experimental, quasi-experimental, and Input-Ouput methods to understand and evaluate the effects of policies, programs, and business decisions on regional economic growth across different sectors and identify opportunities at the local level that could spur regional growth through business development and workforce attraction and retention.