Jad Melki, Ph.D., is associate professor of journalism and media studies and the director of the Institute of Media Research and Training at the Lebanese American University. He is also a visiting faculty at the Salzburg Academy and an affiliated researcher with ICMPA at the University of Maryland. In 2015, Melki won the UNESCO-UNAoC International Media and Information Literacy Award for advancing media literacy education in the Arab region through founding the Media and Digital Literacy Academy of Beirut. Melki's research is at the intersection of digital media literacy, journalism, war, gender and health communication. He won the 2020 Shoman Arab Researchers Award for his research on the impact of social media in the Arab World. Previously, Melki was founding director of Media Studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and has taught at the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins, Towson University, and the Jordan Media Institute. As a former journalist, Melki was part of a team that won a Webby Award and a National Press Club Award for covering the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war.