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.

Kamilla Swart-Arries is an Associate Professor and Director of the Masters in Sport and Entertainment Management program, a joint degree with the University of South Carolina. She has 30 years of experience in sport, tourism, and event management that spans academia and the private sector and has consulted broadly in both public and private sectors.

Swart-Arries has worked in industry as a Sport and Facilities Manager at the Cape Town 2004 Olympic bid and as a Sponsorship Consultant for Octagon SA delivering strategic sponsorship services to major corporates in South Africa. She also headed the Durban Events Corporation – a public-private sector partnership with the City of Durban to use events to attract tourism where she was instrumental in driving the 2010 FIFA World Cup research agenda. Kamilla has headed major research projects managing field research at the 2008, 2012, and 2016 Olympic Games, and the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups.

She worked closely with Qatar Foundation's 2022 FIFA World Cup master program and the supreme committee for delivery and legacy in driving the research agenda. Kamilla served as Co-Chair of the World Association of Sport Management Conference Qatar 2023. She has been appointed to the Scientific Committee (research pillar) of the UNESCO Chair on Governance & Social Responsibility in Sports.

Annie Mathew is currently working as an administrative assistant with almost 23 years of successful experience in the administrative field, including the private, health, and research sectors. 

She obtained her bachelor's degree and has also taken a diploma in Information and Systems Management.

Mr. Janarthanan Ponraj graduated with an MSc degree in Electronics Science from the University of Madras and has a BSc degree in Physics from Madurai Kamaraj University. Before joining the core lab facility in the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI) as a Research Associate in May 2018, he worked as a Field Service Engineer for about 10 years on a complete range of transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) manufactured by the FEI company. His current responsibility includes imaging and characterization of samples on TEMs.

Dr. Abdulkarem Amhamed is a Senior Scientist, CO2 Cluster Program Director, and a Chartered Chemical Engineer by training with 22 years of experience in the oil and gas industry sector including Industry 4.0 and sustainable processes design. Dr. Amhamed earned his PhD and MS degrees in Chemical Engineering from Bradford University, UK, and from University of Salford, UK, respectively. He introduced the Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) research and technology development to QEERI. 

Dr Amhamed has previously held many senior research and management positions, including serving as Strategic Research Project Lead between QP and UOP Honeywell (7.5 Million USD) and Engineering & Projects General Manager-ESSO, Libya. He has a solid experience in CO2 capturing and utilization, LNG, NGL and sour gas purification. His research and industrial experience has attracted more than $10M in external funding. Recently, he obtained the highest grant ($6,4 Million) in HBKU/Qatar Foundation (CO2 Cluster Project). As program director for the grant, he leads more than 29 researchers including PIs, students, and postdoctoral researchers. Dr. Amhamed was an adjunct professor in Benghazi University, where he taught several undergraduate and graduate courses such as chemical reactions, mass transfer, CCUS course, plant process design, and gas sweetening processes.

Yehia Manawi is a scientist at Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute’s (QEERI’s) Water Center and Natural and Environmental Hazards Observatory (NEHO). He works on pressure-driven membrane processes at the Water Center and on monitoring naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) in Qatar’s groundwater and seawater at NEHO.

Dr. Zhaoyang Liu is a Senior Scientist at Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute's (QEERI) Water Center. He specializes in advancing water treatment technologies, with a number of his research outcomes published in top journals like Energy & Environmental Science, and Advanced Materials, and featured in Nature. Dr. Liu has an h-index of 45 on Google Scholar (Jan. 2023). Leading projects at QEERI, he focuses on addressing local challenges from the perspective of the Water-Energy-Food nexus. His team has developed pilot-scale water treatment prototypes. He is the holder of multiple patents (PCT, US, EU), one of which has been licensed to a commercial company in Singapore. He serves on the editorial boards for the journals of Desalination and Scientific Reports. Dr. Liu's experience extends to mentoring PhD candidates at HBKU.