Dr. Souha Kanj
Dr. Souha kanj is currently a tenured Professor of Medicine, Associate Dean for Global Affairs, Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Chair of the Infection Control Program and co-Chair of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, Beirut, Lebanon. She is also Consulting Professor at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, USA, where she undertook her training in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases. She was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute associate during her training at Duke.
She established the Infectious Diseases Transplant service at Duke University in 1994 which has become one of the leading centers for care and training in the US. She joined AUB faculty of medicine in 1998 and rose through the ranks.
Professor Kanj is extensively published, with more than 240 papers in international journals. She has also been an invited author of numerous book chapters, journal reviews and UpToDate® cards.
Professor Kanj has contributed greatly to the work of the World Health Organization (WHO) in various programs, such as the R&D Blueprint Annual Review of Priority Diseases, the Global Infection Prevention and Control Network, and the WHO Priority Pathogens List Project for Antimicrobial Resistant Bacteria. In 2020, she was appointed to serve on the WHO COVID-19 Guidance Development Group of experts (COVID-19 IPC GDG). She is an international advisor for The Lancet journal. In addition, she is a board member of various international networks and organizations working on different aspects of infection control, and antimicrobial stewardship such as the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA), the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (ISAC), the Surveillance and Epidemiology of Drug Resistant Infectious Consortium (SEDRIC), the GAP-ON€, addressing the cost of antimicrobial resistance in a one-health approach. She is also a member of the FUNDICU international consortium aiming to establish definitions for fungal infections in the critical care patients.
She has participated in seminal clinical studies that have impacted the practice of infectious diseases addressing infections with multidrug resistant Gram negative pathogens such as the PANORAMA study looking at mortality of bacteremia with carbapenem resistant Enterobacterales in low-middle income countries (LMIC), The MERINO trial, a randomized trial for treatment of bacteremia due to third generation cephalosporins resistant Enterobacterales, the Consortium on Resistance Against Carbapenems in Klebsiella and other Enterobacterales (CRACKLEs) part of the Antimicrobial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) among others. Her research interest is mainly focus on viral pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, antimicrobial stewardship, infection control, and fungal infections. She has been invited to speak and chair numerous regional and international conferences to speak on these topics.
Professor Kanj is a fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP), the Infectious Diseases Society of America (FIDSA), the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP), the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (FESCMID) and the European Confederation of Medical Mycology (FECMM). She a past member of the scientific affairs committee of ESCMID and was elected to the executive committee of the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (ISAC) in November 2019.
She has served on panels for international guidelines such as IDSA vertebral osteomyelitis and the recent ECMM global mucormycosis, and the rare yeasts guidelines as well as on positions papers by the FUNDICU projects.
Professor Kanj has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards throughout her career, including the Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research (LNCSR) award in 2014 and the Abdul Hameed Shoman award for researchers in the Arab world in 2017.
In 2018, she received from Radboud University Medical Center, in Nijmegen the Valkhof professorship for women scholars followed by an honorary degree (Doctorem Honoris Causa) in October 2020. In October 2021, she received the award for Excellence for Arab Women in the Medical Field from the League of Arab States at Expo Dubai. In 2021, she was invited by the search and nomination panel of the Kuwait foundation for the advancement of sciences to submit her application for the 2021 Kuwait Prize in the field of Applied Sciences. Dr Kanj was ranked by the “World Scientist and University Ranking 2021” as number 1 in the field of Infectious Diseases in Lebanon, number 8 in Asia and number 76 in the world. In November 2022, she was elected as President -elect of ISAC.
