President

About the President

Dr. Ahmad M. Hasnah is the President of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), a member of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development (QF) in Doha, Qatar. 

Since he joined QF in 2002, Dr. Hasnah has been a key player in the development of Education City– a unique hub for knowledge and education through partnerships with world-class educational and research institutions.

In his roles as the Director of Academic Affairs and later, as the Associate Vice President for Higher Education, Dr. Hasnah was actively involved in the negotiations which led to many of the QF partner universities establishing Qatar campuses, including Texas A&M University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Georgetown University.

Following his appointment as the Executive Vice President and Provost of HBKU in May 2014, he has been instrumental in the establishment of six colleges namely, the College of Islamic Studies, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the College of Science and Engineering, College of Law, College of Health and Life Sciences, and the College of Public Policy, which offer interdisciplinary graduate and PhD programs. 

Dr. Hasnah has contributed to the Research and Development Enterprise of QF and served as a member of the Qatar National Research Fund Steering Committee and the QF Strategic Research Board. Moreover, he is currently overseeing three research institutes under HBKU that focus on Qatar’s grand challenges in the areas of energy and environment, biomedicine, and computing challenges.

He has also taken part in the conception and shaping of the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), a unique global event which aims to create an international multidisciplinary platform to shape education models, explore ground-breaking innovations, and take concrete steps in making significant improvements to worldwide education in the 21st century.

He is on many joint advisory boards, including Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar and Northwestern University in Qatar. He was a member of the Joint Advisory Boards of Texas A&M University at Qatar, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar and Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar for the past 10 years and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Community College of Qatar for the past six years.

Dr. Hasnah has been a panelist at many international conferences such as the NAFSA Conference in the US, Going Global Forum, SCUP North Atlantic Regional Conference, and Reinventing Higher Education Conference at IE University in Madrid.

He holds a Master’s degree (1993) and PhD (1996) in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology, USA. He graduated from Qatar University in 1990 with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Physics.