Dr. El Tayeb Bentri is a Scientist within the Materials Unit, leading the Biomimicry-AI research activities at the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI). His work focuses on leveraging nature-inspired principles and artificial intelligence for accelerated materials discovery, prototyping, and design. He has a continued interest in multiscale corrosion modeling relevant to the oil & gas industry.

He received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry of Materials from the University of Laghouat, Algeria, where he investigated the segregation effects of impurities in nickel grain boundaries. Dr. Bentria joined QEERI at the end of 2015 as a Research Assistant and has since contributed to several NPRP-funded projects as a Post doctoral researcher. His previous research includes explaining fundamentally metal dusting and Carbonyl corrosion and the prediction of thermoelectric properties of novel perovskite structures using density functional theory.

Dr. Kivambe is a Scientist at Qatar Environment & Energy Research Institute (QEERI), where he works on performance and reliability of Photovoltaic (PV) systems. He has over 15 years’ research experience in PV value chain, from crystalline silicon materials to solar cells and modules, including indoor and outdoor testing. He received his M.Sc. in Condensed Matter physics and Biophysics in 2008, and his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 2012 from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), in Norway. Before joining QEERI, Dr. Kivambe worked as a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Photovoltaic Research Laboratory, focusing on performance improvement of low-cost silicon for solar cell applications.

Dr. Manal Alsalama is a Research Associate at the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI). Manal holds a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from King Saud University in Saudi Arabia and a Master’s degree in materials science and technology from Qatar University. She obtained her Ph.D. in sustainable energy from Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Her research focuses on the development of nano-bulk and nanocomposites thermoelectric materials for energy conversion applications. She has experience in nanomaterial synthesis and characterization.
 

Dr. Usaama al-Azami is an Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the College of Islamic Studies. He earned his BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford, his ʿālimiyya at the Al-Salam Institute, and his MA and PhD in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.

His interests lie in Islamic intellectual history, with a particular focus on diachronic transformations in Islamic political thought. His first book, Islam and the Arab Revolutions (Oxford University Press, 2022), examines the way in which influential Islamic scholars responded to the Arab uprisings of 2011 through 2013. He is currently working on a monograph project that explores the question of takfir or excommunication and its diachronic developments from early Islam to modernity.

Dr. Al-Azami's PhD thesis, the chapters of which he is preparing for publication, is entitled "Modern Islamic Political Thought: Islamism in the Arab World from the Late Twentieth to the Early Twenty-first Centuries." In it, he explores how Arab ulama of a mainstream "Islamist" orientation have engaged Western political concepts such as democracy, secularism, and the nation-state, selectively adapting and assimilating aspects of these ideas into their understandings of Islam. Dr. Al-Azami's broader interests extend to a range of disciplines from the Islamic scholarly tradition from the earliest period of Islam up to the present.

Dr. Azhar Siddique has more than 20  years’  experience in the field of evaluation of environmental stressors affecting receptor ecology through contaminant exposure in urban areas of developing countries. Additionally, he has comprehensive experience in supervising and conducting ambient air quality monitoring, managing projects, setting goals, and interpreting  data for regulation/abetment purposes. 

In the early stages of his career, he  dealt mostly with biophysical interactions in aquatic systems. Later, his work shifted towards the current air quality studies of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and associated health risks in urban areas of the Middle East region. His work has been associated with similar studies in Pakistan and the USA, partners with the US National Academy of Sciences. 

Additionally, he had conducted studies on non-methane hydrocarbons (VOCs) profiling during the holy pilgrimage in western Saudi Arabia with the University of California, Irvine.

Over the years, his training as a laboratory-based chemistry graduate shifted more towards field-based environmental studies involving an interdisciplinary perspective of health and well-being. This was drawn from a variety of academic areas, including epidemiology, hazard identification, risk assessment, management and communication, which are critical subfields of public health.

Noora Al-Shukri is a Research Assistant at Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI), where she contributes to pioneering research in biomedical science through literature review, data analysis, and collaborative project development. She previously trained at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, gaining hands-on experience with translational stem cell research and regulatory frameworks. Noora holds a BSc in Biological Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. Beyond research, she is an active youth advocate, representing Qatar on global platforms. Her work aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly in advancing health and education equity.

Dr. Akel Ismail Kahera is a professor and the director of the Graduate Program in Islamic Architecture and Sustainable Urbanism at the College of Islamic Studies, Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar. Raised in Brooklyn, New York, he earned his Bachelor of Architecture from the Pratt Institute, followed by a Master of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

With over thirty years of international experience as an architect, urban planner, and critic, he has also held a range of academic and administrative roles, including professor and dean at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts in Qatar; professor and senior associate dean for research and graduate studies at Clemson University in South Carolina; and professor and director at Prairie View A&M University.

Dr. Kahera’s research, supported by grants from the Qatar Foundation and the Brown Foundation of Houston, Texas, explores the cultural, typological, and sustainable dimensions of architecture and urbanism across the MENA region, the Americas, and the Global South. Dr. Kahera is a trustee of the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture, and Urbanism (INTBAU) and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of New Design Ideas, among other affiliations.

Dr. Ahmet Faruk Aysan is a Professor and Associate Dean for Research at Hamad Bin Khalifa University and a full member of the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA). He previously served as a Board Member and Monetary Policy Committee Member at the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye. He has also consulted for prominent institutions, including the World Bank, Oxford Analytica, and the Central Bank of Türkiye. His research contributions have earned him multiple awards, including the Islamic Economics Research Award from IKAM, the Arab Fintech Forum’s Fintech Researcher of the Year Award (2023), and HBKU’s Research Excellence Award (2024). He is also a recipient of the Boğaziçi University Foundation’s Publication and Academic Promotion Awards, as well as the prestigious Ibn Khaldun Prize. Dr. Aysan is a Research Associate at University College London’s Centre for Blockchain Technologies (UCL CBT), a Research Fellow at the Economic Research Forum, and a Non-resident Fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. He also chairs the MENA Chapter Academy of Sustainable Finance, Accounting, Accountability & Governance (ASFAAG). In 2020, Dr. Aysan was listed among the top influencers in Islamic banking and finance by an academic article published in the Pacific-Basin Finance Journal.

Dr. Mehdi Riazi obtained his PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Toronto. He has supervised 50 master’s and 22 doctoral theses to completion. He has been the chief investigator for three research projects on test validation funded by IELTS, Pearson, and Educational Testing Service (the writing section of the TOEFL-iBT). 

He is the author of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Research Methods (Routledge, 2016) and Mixed Methods Research (Equinox, 2017), and more. His academic works have been cited 4,397 times by other researchers. He has an h-index of 33 and an ih-index of 63 according to Google Scholar.

Dr. Ali Almanna is currently an associate professor in the Department of Language, Culture and Communication at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS). He has a PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Durham, UK, and an MA in Translation Studies from the University of Westminster, UK. In addition to teaching different translation courses, Dr. Almanna has taught other courses, such as linguistics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and applied linguistics. Currently, Dr. Almanna is the series editor (with James Dickins of Leeds University) of Routledge Studies in Arabic Translation.