Rabi Mohtar

Rabi H. Mohtar is a Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South and a Professor of Biological, Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU). During his career, Mohtar has used over $21M in funded research grants to address global resource challenges, including developing the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus framework, characterization of the soil-water medium through thermodynamic modeling, and understanding non-traditional water resource methods. He has authored over 400 publications, tackling WEF security with a holistic approach. He has trained / is training more than 100 PhD and MSc students from different nationalities and backgrounds. Mohtar founded TAMU’s WEF Resource Nexus Initiative (2015–2018. While serving (2017-2020) as Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences (FAFS) of the American University of Beirut (AUB), he also founded its Water-Energy-Food-Health (WEFRAH) Initiative.

Both initiatives focus on addressing the associated grand challenges through state-of-the-art science and inclusive stakeholder dialogues. Mohtar’s contributions are widely recognized, most recently by the Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area (PRIMA) with its first annual Water Energy Food and Ecosystem (WEFE) Nexus Award for his project: ONE Nexus. A Fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), Mohtar also serves as an Executive Board member of the of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA) and represents AUB and TAMU as a Governor of the World Water Council.