Professor Marwan Khraisheh has dedicated his career to advancing education, research, and innovation in engineering and sustainability. After earning his PhD in mechanical engineering from Washington State University in 1996, he spent years in the U.S. building expertise in advanced manufacturing and materials before returning to the region in 2008.

As the founding dean of Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi, he had the opportunity to work with MIT to help establish graduate programs in sustainable technologies and build a strong academic and research community. In 2014, he joined Qatar Foundation to lead the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), where he worked alongside a team of 120 researchers addressing energy, water, and environmental challenges. At HBKU, he contributed to research, innovation, and digital learning initiatives, and later, as Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University at Qatar, he focused on developing programs in smart and sustainable manufacturing.

In August 2024, he returned to HBKU to support faculty development and help establish a new mechanical engineering program within the College of Science and Engineering.

Professor Khraisheh has received several international recognitions, including the US National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the SME’s Eugene Merchant Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a member of the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP).

Throughout his career, he has contributed to national and international strategic initiatives, including Qatar’s National Development and Manufacturing Strategies, and has served on committees supporting education, research, and innovation.

Dr. Reem Ali is a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Health and Life Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. She received her PhD degree in Oncology from the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom.

Dr. Reem completed her first postdoctoral fellowship at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, where she continued her work on identifying biomarkers for PARP inhibitor resistance in endometrial cancers. She also worked on targeting the base excision repair pathway in breast and ovarian cancers. She developed an interest in PARP inhibitors and studied the mechanisms of resistance to this first FDA-approved DNA repair inhibitor in humans.

يشغل الدكتور إياد أحمد مسعد منصب نائب الرئيس للبحوث في جامعة حمد بن خليفة، حيث يشرف على النمو المستمر للبيئة البحثية في الجامعة. وقبل انضمامه إلى جامعة حمد بن خليفة كأستاذ في كلية العلوم والهندسة، أمضى الدكتور مسعد 20 عامًا في جامعة تكساس إي أند أم وفرعها في قطر تولى خلالها مناصب قيادية عدة. كما ساهم الدكتور في ترسيخ مؤسسة قطر كمركز للتميّز البحثي. وهو عضو متميّز في الجمعية الأمريكية للمهندسين المدنيين، وزميل في الجمعية الأمريكية لتقدم العلوم.

يشتهر الدكتور إياد مسعد عالميًا بأعماله في التوصيف متعدد المستويات والنمذجة لمواد البنية التحتية. هذا إلى جانب أدواره القيادية المختلفة في منظمات مهنية مثل الجمعية الأمريكية للمهندسين المدنيين (ASCE)، ومجلس بحوث النقل (TRB)، وأكاديمية علوم وهندسة رصف الطرق (AAAS).

ويشارك الدكتور إياد مسعد في هيئات تحرير العديد من المجلات العلمية الدولية. وقد حاز على العديد من الجوائز الوطنية والدولية تقديرًا لإسهاماته القيادية والأكاديمية والبحثية المتميّزة، منها جائزة فرانسيس سي. تيرنر (2022) من معهد النقل والتنمية التابع للجمعية الأمريكية للمهندسين المدنيين، وجائزة محاضرة مونيسميث (2022) من المعهد الجيوتقني التابع للجمعية الأمريكية للمهندسين المدنيين، وجائزة جيمس لوري (2019) من الجمعية الأمريكية للمهندسين المدنيين.

Aldana Al-Sulaiti is a PhD student in Computer Science and Engineering at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU). She earned her Bachelor's degree in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University in 2019 and her Master's degree in Cybersecurity from HBKU in 2025. Her research interest is in investigating quantum-enhanced approaches to machine learning.

Dr. Sami El-Borgi is a Professor of mechanical engineering at the College of Science and Engineering at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. His field of research spans areas of structural health monitoring, continuum mechanics, fracture and contact mechanics, nonlinear vibration, finite element analysis, metamaterials, and smart manufacturing. He has published around 120 papers in high-impact journals in addition to one US patent. Over the last two decades, he has collaborated with well-known and reputable scholars in the fields of nonlinear vibration, fracture mechanics, contact mechanics, and finite element analysis.

Professor El-Borgi has been awarded numerous research grants with funding provided by the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education, the Qatar National Research Fund, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. State Department, and the European Commission. In collaboration with Virginia Tech in 2003, he introduced a Master’s program in Computational Mechanics and a PhD program in Applied Mechanics at Tunisia Polytechnic School, University of Carthage, Tunisia. Prof. El-Borgi also serves as a reviewer for more than 60 international journals and is a member of the editorial board of a few engineering journals. In recognition of his services to the higher education sector, the Republic of Tunisia awarded him the Presidential Order of Merit of Education in 2008.

Dr. Mohammed R. Shaker is a Scientist at the Neurological Disorders Research Center, Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience from Korea University, Seoul, in 2017, and was subsequently awarded the prestigious Brain Korea 21 Plus Fellowship. He then joined the Australian Institute for Bioengineering & Nanotechnology (AIBN) at The University of Queensland, where he advanced organoid models for the study of human brain and spinal cord development.

Dr. Shaker’s research integrates patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) with organoid platforms, focusing on neurological disorders, e.g. white matter diseases and neural tube defects. His work has garnered multiple national and international accolades, such as fellowships from the Children’s Hospital Foundation and the European Leukodystrophy Association. Dr. Shaker continues to explore innovative 3D culture systems and computational approaches to accelerate breakthroughs in neuroregeneration and disease modeling. His pioneering research remains at the forefront of precision medicine and translational neuroscience.

Dr. Jasni earned her BSc and MSc in General Biotechnology from the University of Calicut, India. She completed her PhD in Genomics and Precision Medicine from Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar, under the supervision of Dr. Ayman Al Haj Zen. During her PhD, she characterized the functions of coronary artery disease GWAS gene candidates in the human aortic smooth muscle cell phenotype switching model of atherosclerosis.

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 Pediatric Solid Tumors.

Mahima Aggarwal is a Research Assistant at Qatar Computing Research Institute where she focuses on anticipatory humanitarian actions using AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs). Her work involves creating authentic datasets about natural disasters, training models, and generating scenarios for effective anticipatory actions. She is a key contributor to QarSUMO, a parallel, congestion-optimized traffic simulator built on SUMO. Her contributions include improving accuracy, dynamic rerouting, load balancing, and integrating reinforcement learning for dynamic traffic prediction and network repartitioning. Additionally, she contributed to adding features to an end-to-end browser-based simulation/visualization system for local stakeholders.

With a strong foundation in embedded systems and software engineering, Mahima brings over 15 years of expertise in research, development, and system design. Before her current role, Mahima worked as a research assistant at Qatar University’s KINDI Center for Computing Research, focusing on cybersecurity for next-generation healthcare systems. Her career also includes roles as a testing & commissioning engineer at Sony Professional Solutions, as well as software engineering positions at NXP (Freescale Semiconductor) and KritiKal Solutions.

Dr. Ahmed Lekssays is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Qatar Computing Research Institute. He obtained his PhD from the University of Insubria in Varese, Italy in 2022 funded by EU's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. His research interests include malware analysis, software security, and distributed systems.

Dr. Tasnim Mohiuddin is a Scientist in the Arabic Language Technologies group at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), where he works on pioneering initiatives in the development and enhancement of Large Language Models (LLMs). He is a core contributor to the creation of Fanar, QCRI's flagship LLM. His current research focuses on domain-specific LLM innovations, including specialized areas such as Code LLMs and Multimodal LLMs.

Before joining QCRI, Dr. Tasnim was a researcher at Huawei Research Center in Singapore, where he concentrated on multimodal representation learning, bridging both linguistic and visual modalities. His research contributions have been consistently recognized through publications in leading academic conferences.

Tasnim completed his doctoral studies at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, receiving his PhD in June 2022 under the mentorship of Professor Shafiq Joty. His doctoral dissertation was honored with the prestigious Outstanding PhD Thesis Award, reflecting the originality and impact of his research. During his doctoral studies, he also gained valuable experience as a research intern at Meta AI Research, working under the guidance of Professor Philipp Koehn.