Mustafa A. G. Abushagur (; born 15 February 1951) is a Libyan politician, professor of electrical engineering, university president and entrepreneur. He served as interim Deputy Prime Minister of Libya from 22 November 2011 to 14 November 2012 in Abdurrahim El-Keib's cabinet and was briefly elected to succeed El-Keib as Prime Minister in 2012, before failing to receive congressional approval for his cabinet nominees and being removed from office.
Early life
Abushagur was born in the Souq Al-Jumuah district of Tripoli on 15 February 1951. When he was a few years old, his family moved to the western mountain city of Gharyan, where they resided for sometime before returning to Souq Al-Jumuah in Tripoli.
Education
He began his education in Gharyan. When he was in second grade, he moved to Souq Al-Jumuah schools where he continued his studies until he completed high school. He then studied at the University of Tripoli where he earned a BSc in electrical engineering. In 1975, Abushagur moved to Pasadena, California, to continue his education at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). During his time at Caltech, he earned a MSc in electrical engineering in 1977 and earned his PhD in 1984.
Career
Abushagur began his academic career as a visiting professor at the University of Rochester, New York, in 1984. Then he joined the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) in 1985 as an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) and became full Professor in 1995. While working in the ECE department, he proposed a plan to start an optical engineering undergraduate program. He went on to develop the curriculum and was the Chairman of the Optical Engineering Committee for the remainder of his time at the university. This program became the first to receive the ABET accreditation in optical engineering in the USA. During his time at UAH, Abushagur received multiple research awards and grants from several federal agencies, such as NASA, NSF, DoD and the FAA. While on sabbatical leave from UAH, Abushagur was involved in two start-up companies. The first start-up was Photronix (M) Sdn. Bhd. in Malaysia, an optical fiber component company, which he founded in 1998 with private equity. From 1998 to 2002, Abushagur was the president and CTO before returning to his position at UAH. His second start-up was LiquidLight, which was an optical networking equipment developer, which was founded through venture capital. He was the co-founder, CTO and vice president of LiquidLight from 2000 to 2001.
In 2002, Abushagur was the founding director of the PhD program in microsystems engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). In early 2007, he led the effort to establish a satellite campus in the Middle East and drove the negotiations between RIT and the Emirati government's Dubai Silicon Oasis in Dubai, UAE. The satellite campus was opened in fall 2008 and Abushagur became the founding president of RIT Dubai.
Abushagur's key research areas are nanophotonics, plasmonics, photonic microsystems, adaptive signal processing, optical MEMS, optical computing, optical communications, optical interconnects and fiber sensors. He holds three patents, has published ninety-eight research papers, published a book on Fourier optics and has been invited to write five book chapters. As a result of his significant contributions to the field of optics, the field of photonics and for pioneering educational programs, Abushagur was named a fellow of the Optical Society of America and the International Society of Optics and Photonics (SPIE). He also won numerous awards such as the Space Act Award from the NASA Inventions and Contributions Board in 2004, served as an editor for several professional journals and cumulatively received approximately thirteen million dollars in research grants and funding.
In 2013, he received the Optical Society of America's Robert E. Hopkins Leadership Award for his "leadership in education and entrepreneurship, which led to establishment of important programs, institutions and companies devoted to developing optics in the United States, the Middle East and North Africa."