She is a professor and Zohrab A. Kaprielian Fellow in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California,[5] and a program director at the National Science Foundation.
[6] Kanso graduated in 1997 from the American University of Beirut with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering.
[7] Her doctoral dissertation, Impact of a Pseudo-Ball on a Rigid Foundation, was jointly supervised by Panayiotis Papadopoulos and Andrew J.
[7] In 2014 the American University of Beirut gave Kanso their Distinguished Young Alumnus Award.
[7] She was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2022, after a nomination from the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, "for penetrating and insightful investigations of problems in biological aquatic and aerial locomotion, ciliary transport, swarms and schooling, and many other topics, that deftly blend elegant theoretical models and physical experiments".