Dr. Hassan S. Bazzi is the Associate Dean for External Affairs, Head of the Division of Science, and Professor of Chemistry at the College of Science and Engineering. He is a Fellow of both the American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Dr. Bazzi completed the Management Development Program and the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education at Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Bazzi worked at Texas A&M University at Qatar for over 20 years, where he helped establish and manage the Qatar campus. He was the longest-serving faculty administrator at Texas A&M at Qatar, maintaining continuous tenure in leadership roles between 2006 and 2024. Throughout his career, he assumed various administrative roles, ranging from Chair of Academic Programs to multiple Assistant, Associate, and Senior Associate Dean positions. He possesses substantial expertise in leading and overseeing higher education institutions in an international setting.

Dr. Bazzi is the author and co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and 150 conference presentations. His research interests include metathesis chemistry for small molecule and polymer synthesis, polymer-supported catalysis, DNA-mimetic polymers, and fluorous analogs of ruthenium-based catalysts.

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 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 pedagogy. Before joining HBKU, he served as an assistant professor at Texas A&M University at Qatar. He has previously taught at University of Miami and several other universities in the United States and abroad. He has also worked as a travel writer in China, where his writing appeared in newspapers, magazines, and online publications.

His research focuses on literature and film of and about the Global South, particularly how cultural texts represent war, migration, colonialism, and political violence. He is interested in questions of narrative, ethics, spectatorship, witnessing, humanitarianism, resource extraction, waste, pollution, and displacement, as well as the ways literature and film shape understandings of history and memory. He is especially interested in narrative form, visual aesthetics, and how cultural texts contest dominant political and historical narratives. He welcomes opportunities for collaboration and interdisciplinary projects related to literature, film, visual culture, and pedagogy.
 

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.

Ahmed Farouk is a Senior Scientist at the Qatar Center for Quantum Computing and an Associate Professor at the faculty of computers and artificial intelligence at Hurghada University, Egypt. He is an early-career scientist demonstrating excellence in quantum communication, quantum cryptography, quantum machine learning, and cybersecurity research, having published more than 120 research papers with a high impact (over 5,300 citations and a 39 H-index). He received the Egyptian State Encouragement Award in advanced technological sciences, the University Encouragement Award in basic sciences and engineering, the Prof. Dr. Tarek Kamel Award in communications and information technology, and many more.

He has also been selected as one of 17 researchers from Africa to participate in the prestigious Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, selected by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to participate in the 2^nd and 3^rd U.S.-Africa Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine symposium and his work has been recognized as one of Stanford's World Top 2% scientists. He has won several travel and full grants from IEEE Computer Society, Lindau Foundation, Baden-Württemberg International, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

Dr. Rozha Yousefjani received her Ph.D. in Quantum Physics from the University of Kurdistan, Iran. Her doctoral work laid the foundation for her continued contributions to the field of quantum technology. From 2019 to 2024, she served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), where she conducted advanced research in quantum physics. Dr. Yousefjani’s work focuses on the theoretical aspects of quantum sensing, quantum computation, and many-body quantum systems. With a strong background in both analytical methods and interdisciplinary collaboration, she continues to contribute to cutting-edge research in the quantum domain.

Safaa Alqrinawi holds an M.Sc. in Physics from the Islamic University of Gaza, following a B.Sc. in Physics from Al-Azhar University, Gaza, with a minor in medical physics, which provided a foundation in diagnostic and therapeutic radiation as well as image processing. Her research interests are centered around quantum computing, quantum sensing, photonics, and computational modeling. She is currently a PhD student at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, working on projects related to machine learning and quantum machine learning techniques and their application in designing and optimizing photonic sensors.

Ali Al-Kuwari is a cybersecurity professional and researcher with a strong interest in quantum communication security. His research focuses on improving the security and performance of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) systems using Machine Learning and Quantum Machine Learning techniques. During his Master’s degree, he worked on detecting attacks on QKD protocols by developing hybrid quantum-classical models. More recently, his research has expanded toward optimizing QKD systems and improving their practical deployment. He is particularly interested in real-world implementation challenges, including satellite-based QKD and secure quantum communication infrastructures.