Naeem M. Abdurrahman

Dr. Naeem M. Abdurrahman (a.k.a. Naeem Al-Gheriany) P.h.D, PE (Arabic نعيم عبدالرحمن الغرياني) is a Libyan nuclear scientist, engineer and academic. He was named Libya's Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research on 22 November 2011 by Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib.

After leaving the University of Texas, he took a position as a Principal Scientist at the Department of Energy's Hanford site for Fluor Corporation and held the same position at CH2M HILL in 2008. In 2009, Dr. Gheriany was appointed to the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Engineering and Technology. Since 2010, he has held the positions of Nuclear Scientist within the U.S Department of Energy Headquarters' Office of Safety and Security and an Adjunct Professor for the Catholic University of America.

Gheriany's career began as a senior scientist at Advanced Innovative Sciences, where he remained for five years before moving to academia. In 1993, he accepted a position as a Professor of Nuclear Engineering and as the Nuclear Engineering Program Director at the University of Texas at Austin. During his time at the University of Texas, Gheriany managed the University of Texas Nuclear Engineering Program. As Program Director, he improved student enrollment and increased research funding several fold. Additionally, he has published over fifty articles and papers in refereed scientific journals, conference proceedings and technical reports.

In the early 1970s, Gheriany received a scholarship from Libyan government and moved to the United States to pursue his undergraduate study and higher education. He earned a B.Sc. with honors in Nuclear Engineering and a B.Sc. with honors in Engineering Physics from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville before returning to Libya in 1978 to work as a teaching assistant at the University of Tripoli. In 1979, Gheriany returned to the United States, where he earned a M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Washington and a PhD in Nuclear Science and Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. He obtained his Professional Engineer (PE) license from the State Board of Examiners, Hartford CT, shortly thereafter. He also earned an MBA from Washington State University. Since his appointment to the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Engineering and Technology in 2009, Gheriany has resided in Germantown, MD with his wife, Mariam, and their five children; Sawsan Abdurrahman, Fatima Abdurrahman, Najla Abdurrahman, Sarah Abdurrahman and Omar Abdurrahman.

Gheriany was an active member of the Libyan opposition to the former regime of Muammar Gaddafi. His political activities began during his undergraduate years in the mid 1970s when he was active among the Libyan students in the US and later participated in the founding of the General Union for the Students of Libya in North America. In the late 1970s he participated in various efforts to organize the Libyan opposition movement abroad, and was a founding member of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya in the early 1980s, and a member of its Permanent Bureau through the 1980s.

Gheriany was born in Tripoli, Libya in 1954 and completed primary and secondary schooling in Tripoli.