Salman Ahmad (, born 12 December 1963) is a Pakistani born-American musician, rock guitarist, physician, activist, occasional actor and professor at the City University of New York. He earned nationwide popularity in 1998 for his unique style of neoclassical playing in rock. An early engineer of the Vital Signs, he formed Junoon (lit. Obsession) in 1990 with American bassist Brian O'Connell and pioneered the Sufi influenced rock music in Pakistan. He started his activism in the mid-1990s and has been involved in two BBC documentaries concerning the issues in Pakistan such as society, education, religion and science. He has served as the UN Goodwill Ambassador for HIV/AIDS Programme towards spreading awareness about HIV in South Asia. While working with the Pakistan's media to help initiate peace between India and Pakistan, Ahmad continues to produce documentaries and solo guitar albums. At present, he is serving tenured professor at the Queens College of the City University of New York. With Junoon band being disintegrated, Salman Ahmad continues to perform as a solo artist under the "Junoon" label and has moved to New York and released one album as a solo artist, "Infiniti" in 2005. Salman was tested positive for COVID-19 in April 2020. Early life Salman Ahmad spent his childhood in Pakistan and was educated at Aitchison College, before moving to New York when his father got a job in the airline industry. Ahmad then attended middle and high school in the United States, where he was first exposed to rock music at a Led Zeppelin concert at Madison Square Garden. Motivated to become a musician, he began learning the guitar against his parents wishes. After graduation, he returned to Pakistan in order to attend medical school. However, due to vast changes in the political climate and the advent of extremism, Ahmad's guitar playing was repressed. He took action by playing at covert talent shows, unfazed by criticism and even death threats from extremists. These underground performances and the consequent censorship set the stage for him to become a peace advocate and eventually found the bands Junoon and Vital Signs. Music career He has been teaching a class on music titled "Islamic Music and Culture of South Asia", as a guest faculty at Queens College. This year, he started his second semester as a guest faculty. On 1 March 2008, Ahmad performed with Yale Strom (a world leading Klezmer artist) at Temple