About

About me

Dr. Elias Akoury is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the Lebanese American University in Beirut (Lebanon) and head of the Biophysical Chemistry Research Group.

Dr. Akoury earned his Diploma in Chemistry from the Lebanese University in 2007. He went on to complete a Master’s degree in Advanced Spectroscopy in Chemistry in 2009 through a joint Erasmus Mundus program at the University of Lille (France) and the University of Leipzig (Germany). He then joined the research group of Professor Markus Zweckstetter at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen (Germany) where he conducted his doctoral studies under the supervision of Professor Christian Griesinger. In 2013, Dr. Akoury was awarded a PhD in Physical Chemistry, with his research focusing on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy and drug discovery.

Dr. Akoury undertook postdoctoral research at the Gene Center of the University of Munich. In 2016, he joined the Department of Chemistry as a research associate and academic tutor. During this tenure, he managed the NMR facility, which housed a suite of high-field NMR spectrometers, and oversaw operations in the protein biophysical chemistry and molecular biology laboratories.

Dr. Elias Akoury has published in peer-reviewed internationally renowned journals (Cell, JACS, Angewandte Chemie, Nucleic Acids Research, PNAS) and presented his research at international conferences. He is an active member of the German Chemical Society (GDCh), the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the International Society for Neurochemistry (ISN). He received the prestigious Erasmus-Mundus Scholarship from the European Commission, the Max Planck Society research scholarship, the Next Generation Investigator Award from CASSS California in addition to travel awards to international conferences.

Expertise

Dr. Akoury has a broad technical experience in scientific instrumentation that covers the application of NMR, chromatographic analysis, optical spectroscopies, XRD, SAXS, protein synthesis and purification. Additionally, he is a certified application specialist and technical support for NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry for JEOL Germany.

Other research interests include spectroscopic and computational approaches into the characterization of sulfonated phthalocyanine Π-Π stacking, methodology in NMR spectroscopy, molecular mechanisms in drug design for protein aggregation inhibition, and analysis of emerging contaminants and pharmaceutical derivatives in water bodies.