Dr. Mohammad Al-Saidi is an Associate Professor at the College of Public Policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. He has 14 years of continuous academic experience in Germany and Qatar. His research focuses on environmental policies, particularly in the Middle East. He has been involved in research projects in the Gulf, East Africa, Yemen, Jordan, and Egypt, among others. Dr. Al-Saidi has won a university-wide research award and was elected to the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities based in Berlin.

Before joining Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Dr. Al-Saidi was active in research and teaching at several academic institutions, including Qatar University, TH-Köln, and Doha Institute. He regularly contributes to policy think tanks on environmental issues in the Middle East. Dr. Al-Saidi strongly believes in science with tangible impacts, based on values such as sustainability, equity, and diversity. As a result, he has been actively engaged internationally in research dissemination, policy transfer, and coalition building.

Azzam Abu-Rayash is an Assistant Professor at the College of Science and Engineering at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Governor at Ontario Tech University, and the founding CEO of Polaris Energy Sustainability Solutions. Dr. Abu-Rayash is licensed as a Certified Energy Manager (CEM) and Certified Measurement and Verification Professional (CMVP) by the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE). He is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with the Project Management Institute.

Dr. Abu-Rayash has over a decade of industrial and research experience in the energy industry and sustainability field and has published numerous books and peer-reviewed articles on the topics of energy sustainability and smart cities. He has also presented research at numerous national and international conferences. His contributions to the field have been highly recognized, with his articles ranking among the most cited since 2019 in Elsevier’s journals such as the Journal of Energy Research and Social Science.

Dr. Abu-Rayash authored the energy plan for the City of Oshawa, which was recognized by the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) by receiving the Institutional Energy Management Award for 2020. He played a pivotal role in shaping Canada’s Green Building Strategy through establishing the Government Greening Fund and the Green Building Directive, leading the public sector towards Net Zero. Currently, he leads a vibrant research group working on several projects on the topics of smart cities and the sustainable built environment.

Dr. Bryant Scott is an assistant professor of practice in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, specializing in postcolonial and world literature, transnational and diasporic studies, film studies and visual culture, literary and critical theory, and first-year writing and pedagogy. Before joining HBKU, he served as an instructional assistant professor at Texas A&M University in Qatar. He has previously taught at the University of Miami and several other universities in the US and around the world. He has also worked as a travel writer in China, and his travel writing has been published in many newspapers, magazines, and online publications.

His research focuses on literature and film of and about the global south, human rights literature, and humanitarianism, with particular attention to how war, violence, and dehumanization are represented in textual and visual forms. His work considers the intersections of narrative and ethics, exploring how literary and cinematic cultural texts represent and respond to political violence, migration, war, and the legacies of colonialism. Focusing on narrative and visual aesthetics, his work considers the ethics of representation and how literature and film negotiate and challenge dominant narratives.

Anne Schmalstig is an assistant professor of practice in English at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) at Hamad bin Khalifa University (HBKU), where she joined after teaching literature and academic composition courses for four years at Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMU-Q).

She received a PhD in English Literature from the University of Miami, and an MA in English Literature from Purdue University. Her academic work focuses on narratives of climate change and environmental concerns in speculative fiction, with particular interests in Afrofuturism and the New Weird. Her research and teaching interests include environmental humanities, climate fiction, science fiction, writing about literature, and writing about the environment.

Dr. Naqaa Abbas earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from Western University where her research focused on representations of Islam and the other in nineteenth-century British, German, and French Romanticism. Her work on representation continues with ongoing projects that examine questions of gender, cultural identity, and linguistic identity in writing communities in the Gulf today.

Before joining HBKU, Dr. Abbas was a faculty member in English and served as the Writing in the Disciplines coordinator at Texas A&M University in Qatar. In her teaching and administrative roles, she focused on effective business communication, writing pedagogy, and writing in the disciplines for undergraduate students.

She has over eighteen years of teaching and administrative experience in North American, European, and Middle Eastern institutions. Before joining HBKU, Dr. Abbas taught a variety of composition and literature courses at Western University, Zurich University, the University of Saskatchewan, and Qatar University.

She has received multiple teaching grants at TAMUQ, including a Transformative Educational Experience Grant for three consecutive years and a Multiversity Grant. Her commitment to teaching and service has been recognized through two prestigious university-wide awards: the Early Career Faculty Excellence Award and the Distinguished Service Award.

Dr. Ibrahim Zain is a Professor of Islamic Studies and History of Religion at the College of Islamic Studies (CIS), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU). His various academic postings include Dean of the Kulliyyah (Faculty) of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences (KIRKHS) and Dean of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). He writes extensively on the history of religions and reform of Islamic education and has authored over 50 publications, including several books, in English and Arabic. Dr. Zain is a leading scholar on the study of the Covenants of the Prophet Muḥammad.

Dr. Noor Al-Maslamani is a researcher working at the interface of cell mechanics, bioengineering, and biology, focused on developing mechanics-informed in vitro platforms for studying neurological development and disease. She received her PhD in musculoskeletal biology (medicine) from the University of Liverpool and holds a master’s degree in biomedical sciences and a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronic engineering.

Her research centers on cellular and tissue mechanotransduction in human systems, integrating biophysical microenvironment control and advanced 3D culture technologies to generate reproducible, human-relevant disease models aligned with New Approach Methodologies (NAMs).

In parallel, Dr. Al-Maslamani investigates mechanobiology-driven disease mechanisms using mechanosensitive pathways, including the low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein (LRP) family, to understand how mechanical cues regulate tissue development, maturation, and dysfunction. This work incorporates population-specific molecular and genetic analyses to identify mechanobiology-relevant signatures and variants that are clinically meaningful in the Qatari context.

Her long-term objective is to develop a coherent and scalable research direction that couples platform innovation with mechanistic discovery, strengthening Qatar’s capacity in in vitro disease modeling, therapeutic screening, and translational biomedical innovation, while contributing to the mentoring and development of interdisciplinary researchers.

Together, these efforts define a unified research focus in mechanics-informed modeling of human neural development and neurological disease, integrating experimental platforms, mechanistic insight, and enabling technologies.
 

Dr. Sana obtained her Master’s in Biochemistry, Biotechnology and Therapeutic Targets from Paris Diderot University, France. In 2014, she completed her PhD in Therapeutic Innovation, both fundamental and applied, at Paris XI University, France. Her doctoral work focused on molecular and cellular physiopathology of idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (iPAH). In 2017, Dr. Sana A. Bentebbal joined the College of Health and Life Science at Hamad Bin Khalifa University as a Postdoctoral researcher where she investigated the molecular and cellular mechanism of human infertility caused by KASH5 mutation.

In 2024, she joined Dr. Julie Decock’s team at QBRI as a Postdoctoral researcher. Her current research focuses on cancer-testis antigens and their role as biomarkers and therapeutic targets in Breast cancer.

Dr. K. Muhammed Shafi is a scientist at the Center for Quantum Computing (QC2), College of Science and Engineering at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Dr. Shafi earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan, in 2020. He also holds an M. Tech. in Optoelectronics and Optical Communication from the University of Kerala and an M.Sc. in Physics from Aligarh Muslim University, India.

His research encompasses quantum communication, quantum illumination, and nanophononics, with experimental expertise in entangled photon generation, single-photon sources, time-correlated single-photon counting, cryogenic optical spectroscopy, optical nanofibers, photonic crystal cavities, and laser cooling of atoms.

Dr. Saif Al-Kuwari is an Assistant Professor at the College of Science and Engineering at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, and an adjunct Research Assistant Professor at Kindi Center for computing research, Qatar University. Dr. Al-Kuwari holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computers and Networks from the University of Essex, UK (2006), and two PhD's in computer science from the University of Bath, UK (2012) and Royal Holloway, University of London, UK (2012).

Previously, he was the Director of the Department of Information Technology (2013 – 2018) and the Acting Director of the Department of Archiving and Documents (2016 – 2019) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Qatar.

Dr. Al-Kuwari received several awards including two platinum awards for outstanding academic performance and two MESA-CISO100 Government Security Leader awards. Dr. Al-Kuwari is an IET Fellow, a BSC Fellow, an IEEE Senior Member, an ACM Senior Member, an IACR Member, an AAAS member and an MAA Member.