Professor Ibrahim Odeh is the Founding Director of the Global Leaders in Construction Management (GLCM) program at the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University. He is a unique combination of a strategist, academic, innovator, and entrepreneur. His work seamlessly merges the worlds of industry and academia, spans the global construction market, and provides leading construction firms with unique market insights; growth strategies; and advice on digital transformation and technological trends that are reshaping the construction industry. Companies that Odeh collaborated or worked with from an advisory perspective, consulting role, or research collaboration effort are: World Economic Forum, Turner Construction, Skanska, Parsons Corporation, The Vertex Companies, Dentons, AECOM, AI Engineers, and Indus.ai. Odeh worked as an advisory committee member at the World Economic Forum on the “Future of Construction” project. In 2017, he also served for two years as an advisory board member at Financial Times - Future of Construction Summit. He sets on several advisory boards and committees such as EnTech Engineering, AI Engineers, Group PMX, Open Insights, Multi.Green, Black Buffalo, and Tough Leaf. In 2021 Odeh was also appointed as an advisory board member at the GI Hub; in support of the G20 agenda, to connect the global infrastructure community and to share insights to facilitate delivery of G20 members’ economic, social and environmental outcomes through increased and improved infrastructure.
Odeh was also the first professor to introduce in Fall 2016 the first Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) to educate global learners in the area of Construction Management under Coursera platform. Since inception, the number of learners registered for Odeh’s courses reached over 500,000 from 190 countries with around 1,000 new learners join his courses every week! His courses ranked third globally under the business category on Coursera from 2017 to 2019. Odeh also delivered several keynote presentations in different countries globally such as the keynote talk at the 1st Smart Construction Tech & Safety Expo in Korea and similar talks in other world class events in several countries such as Dublin-Ireland, Mumbai-India, Cartagena-Colombia, and London-UK. Odeh won several awards and recognitions such as Columbia University Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching; A top honor presented to only five recipients from nearly 1,000 nominations. He was also named Top 20 Under 40 by Engineering News Records and Top 40 Under 40 by Consulting-Specifying Engineer. Odeh received his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as well as he holds an MBA degree.