About

My name is Mario Awad and I’m a software and web developer currently living in Beirut, Lebanon. My academic background includes a master’s degree in Computer Science and a minor in Business Administration (both completed at the American University of Beirut).

I love to work on projects that push the envelope and solve user needs while keeping the design and the usability as simple as possible. I love simplicity, clean designs, and user-centered software. I usually develop web solutions using ASP.NET, C#, JavaScript, and the DotNetNuke framework. I also develop web sites using PHP and I’m currently investigating the excellent WordPress publishing platform (Actually, marioawad.com is built on top of WordPress). I have also developed desktop applications using C# (Windows Forms) and Java (Swing) for businesses, personal projects, and fun. I’m a big fan of Object Oriented Programming and I do my best to match adequate Design Patterns with the project I’m working on. I also employ unit testing frameworks such as JUnit and NUnit and advocate the use of source version control systems such as SVN.

My work experience includes being a full-time lead software developer for the Bicharaf team, project-based software developer for White Mountain Technologies, TT International Group, and the School of Business at the American University of Beirut. In 2004, I was chosen in a team of three programmers to represent AUB (and Lebanon) in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (MENA region). We ranked at the 6th place (out of 35 international teams) and took away the “Extreme Programmers” award which is given to the quickest team to submit the first successful running program. On the personal level, I have developed quite a few interesting projects such as a command line archiving and extraction utility for Linux, finite state machines (DFA, NFA) simulation, a simplified version of the UNIX standard GREP utility, a simple compiler for a Pascal-like programming language, a multitude of small computer games written in Java, and GuiGenie.