School of Business Celebrates Faculty and Researchers Receiving Emerald Awards

In collaboration with Emerald Publishing, Professors Ahmed Tolba, Khaled Samaha, Ayman Ismail and researcher Seham Ghalwash were recognized and celebrated for receiving the Literati Awards, while Professor Nermeen Shehata was recognized for receiving the Emerald Real Impact Award.

The School of Business recognized and celebrated research efforts of its faculty and researchers as a tool for developing and augmenting knowledge. With this in mind, the School is honored that its faculty and researchers have been recognized by Emerald Publishing for creating real impact.
 

Literati Awards

The Emerald Literati Awards were created 25 years ago and given every year to recognize authors and researchers who published papers with high impact, as measured by the number of downloads and citations. 

It aims to recognize the proceed of excellence in research that makes a difference and plays a pivotal role in highlighting the research that has contributed to developments in the field they represent. The awards are now globally recognized as a mark of success, and winners are established through a rigorous review including quantitative measures and qualitative reviews.

This year, the Literati Award winners are Ahmed Tolba, associate professor of marketing and director of El-Khazindar Business Research and Case Center (KCC), Ayman Ismail, Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship, assistant professor, and founder and director of the AUC Venture Lab, Khaled Samaha, tenured professor and chair of the Department of Accounting, and Seham Ghalwash, program manager of CEMS MIM and research manager of GEM. 

The four winners expressed their gratitude towards receiving the award and saw it directly correlated to the quality of teaching at the school. Tolba emphasized that their research was “fitting to the mission and strategy of the School of Business, particularly because of the relevance of entrepreneurship and responsible business as key pillars of the school that receive great focus during classes” and believes the research will allow him to “push” this knowledge to his students.

Similarly, Ismail is grateful for the visibility granted to the topic of social entrepreneurship itself and believes this could provide “cutting edge knowledge” in the real world, as he plans to “connect real-world research to the students through discussions, case studies, and experiential learning during his classes”.

On the award itself, Samaha expressed that “A research that receives an award adds a lot to the psychological build of the researcher, and when this award coming from a prestigious publisher like Emerald, this definitely has a significant and immediate effect on me and my teaching”. As for Ghalwash, she perceives the award as a motivation to excel further, declaring: “Receiving this award means my work is really impactful and caught people’s attention, so in my upcoming research, I will work even harder to publish a paper of exceeding impact”. 

Real Impact Award

The Real Impact Award was created for the cause of academics and researchers to see the impact of their work and to serve as a call on research communities to come together and break down barriers. It’s about making a real difference and aims to connect communities to find ways to make changes and provide.
The winner of this year’s Real Impact Award in the category of “Individual Impact Commitment” is Nermeen Shehata, assistant professor of accounting, for her role on enhancing the public profile of Egypt, understanding its corporate governance and establishing the influence of women board members in Egypt. Shehata has long been committed to this cause, claiming: “Before doing anything, I ask myself whether it could potentially have an impact or make a positive difference to anyone.” 
With the Schools committed to fostering a vibrant and stimulating research ecosystem research activity experiencing significant growth in terms of quality, volume and impact over the past few years, we are thrilled to have five of our school’s members receive these prestigious awards, fortifying our interest towards creating impactful research.