Dr. Muhammad Modassir Ali is Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and Senior Researcher at the College of Islamic Studies (CIS), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU). He received his BA (Hons.) in Usuluddin and his MA and PhD in Comparative Religion from the International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI). His teaching and research focus on comparative religion, particularly Christianity and Eastern religions, Qur’anic civilizations, Sīrah studies, and the intellectual history of the Indian subcontinent. Before joining CIS‑HBKU in 2015, he taught and held leadership roles at the International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) and Qatar University. Recent activity includes a peer‑reviewed article on medieval Muslim youth culture (Islamic Studies, 2025) and a chapter in Mercy and Grace: Christian and Muslim Perspectives (Georgetown University Press, 2025). He currently leads or contributes to projects on medieval Muslim culture, Islamic education in colonial India, and translations of classical works in Islamic education. He is a two‑time Fulbright scholar (UCSB 2003; UIUC 2008).

Dr. Mohammed Ghaly is Professor of Islam and Biomedical Ethics and Head of the Research Center for Islamic Legislation & Ethics (CILE) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Qatar. He holds a BA from Al-Azhar University and both an MA and a PhD in Islamic Studies from Leiden University, where he was a faculty member from 2007 to 2013.

Dr. Ghaly’s leadership roles include serving as founding editor-in-chief of the Scopus-indexed Journal of Islamic Ethics and as Conference Chair for the 17th World Congress of Bioethics, the first edition ever held in the Middle East. He also chaired the founding committee for the MA program in Applied Islamic Ethics at HBKU.

His research explores the critical intersection of Islamic ethics with biomedical sciences and artificial intelligence (AI). He is the author of two monographs, Islam and Disability (2009) and Islamic Ethics and Incidental Findings (2024). He has also edited several volumes on key bioethical issues such as genomics and end-of-life care ethics. His work is further disseminated through numerous peer-reviewed articles in high-impact journals.

Dr. Ghaly has led several major research projects, most recently focusing on “Transforming Islamic Studies in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence.”

Dr. Mohammad Mahmoud El Gammal is a Professor of Comparative Fiqh at the College of Islamic Studies (CIS), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Qatar. He holds a PhD in Comparative Fiqh from Al-Azhar University (2005, with distinction and recommendation for publication). His academic career spans over two decades, including professorships at Al-Azhar University and international engagements across Asia and Africa. He has taught over 50 courses, supervised more than 40 master’s theses, and participated in high-level curriculum development and international training.

Dr. El Gammal also serves as an expert member of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy (مجمع الفقه الإسلامي الدولي), where he contributes to scholarly deliberations on contemporary issues facing Muslim societies worldwide. His research covers Islamic jurisprudence, legal maxims, Islamic finance, and education. He is a prolific contributor to Arabic academic publications, with a strong record in academic arbitration and policy-relevant Islamic scholarship.

Dr. M. Evren Tok is the Associate Dean of Community Engagement and Associate Professor at the College of Public Policy, Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Dr. Tok is also the regional coordinator for the Executive Master’s Program (Development Policies and Practices) jointly offered by the Graduate Institute of Geneva and Hamad Bin Khalifa University. He is the co-editor of Policy Making in a Transformative State: The Case of Qatar, published by Palgrave MacMillan, in 2016. His recent publications “Global Governance and Muslim Organizations” were published by Palgrave MacMillan and Innovating South-South Cooperation by the University of Ottawa Press in 2020. He is the director of a QNRF-funded cluster (2021-2026) entitled “SDG Education and Global Citizenship in Qatar”. He has been the Lead Project Investigator for the Qatar National Research Fund Priority Program for 3 years on “Localizing Entrepreneurship Education in Qatar”. He is the founder of the maker space entitled Maker Majlis: Islam in a Global World, which received the Qatar Sustainability Award under Best University Initiative in 2020 and the OIC Shaikh Hasina Award of Best Innovative Idea in 2022. Dr. Tok also received the Best Research Project Award from HBKU in 2022.

Dr. Yin "David" Yang is an associate professor of ICT in the College of Science and Engineering at HBKU. He also holds adjunct positions at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), and Singapore's Advanced Digital Sciences Center (a branch lab of UIUC). He has published extensively in leading publications, with a strong focus on data management and data privacy protection.

Dr. Yang is the Lead Principal Investigator (PI) of two projects from the Qatar National Research Fund’s main funding program, the National Priorities Research Program (NPRP), focusing on big data and artificial intelligence. He is also the Lead PI of a subproject as part of a large NPRP cluster project on blockchain-based FinTech. 

Along with several local projects, he has also completed three Samsung-funded GRO projects.

Dr. McKay has almost 40 years experience in academia and industry. He is presently a professor of Sustainable Development at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Before this, he was a Full Professor and Head of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). During his time in Hong Kong, he was Chairman of the Chemical Engineering Discipline of the Hong Kong Institute of Engineers.

Prior to joining HKUST in 1995, he spent 10 years in the industry. He established his own company, Consultancy Process Engineering and Management Systems, and this company was subcontracted to Project Management (PM) Ltd (Foster Wheeler Ireland) which employs over 600 staff and is Ireland's largest process engineering design company. He was the Senior Process Specialist, specializing in process plant design, environmental impact assessment and process plant safety. From 1971 to 1987, Dr. McKay was a Reader in the Chemical Engineering Department at Queen’s University, Belfast and he was a Training Consultant to the BP Oil Refinery in Northern Ireland. During this period in 1983/84, he was appointed as Project Manager for a European Commission Technical Assistance project at the University of Jordan. He has over 1000 publications, over 600 in international refereed journals and authored twelve books about energy, environment and process design. He co-authored the second most cited paper (15,000 cites to date) ever in the SCI Chemical Engineering sector and has a Scopus h-index of 101 and a Google Scholar h-index of 116.

Dr. Koç is the Founding Professor of Sustainability at the College of Science and Engineering. He served as the Founding Head of the Division of Sustainable Development from 2014 to 2022. Prior to that, he held professor, director, chair, and dean positions at various universities in Turkey and USA between 2000 and 2014. He has a PhD degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from The Ohio State University (1999) and an Executive MBA from the University of Sheffield, UK, in 2014.

He has published over 400 publications in international journals and conferences. He has also edited and written five books and organized, chaired, and co-chaired various international conferences, workshops, and seminars on design, manufacturing, and product development. He provides consulting services to industry, government, and educational institutes for strategic transformation, business optimization, organizational efficiency, lean operations, restructuring, and reengineering initiatives.

His teaching and research interests and experience are on sustainable development, knowledge economy, education and innovation systems, design thinking, organizational and social efficiency, near-zero waste policies and technologies, renewable energy, additive manufacturing/3D printing, product/process/business innovation and development, medical design and production, energy efficiency, computer-aided engineering, modern manufacturing technologies, manufacturing system design, material forming plasticity, and the mechanical behavior of materials.

Hind Al-Merekhi is a Senior Research Associate with a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from HBKU, specializing in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. As a senior research associate at QCRI, Hind focuses on leveraging NLP techniques for the Arabic language, exploring applications of large language models (LLMs), and developing AI-driven educational systems. Through this work, Hind aims to bridge advanced AI research with practical applications, driving progress in language processing and intelligent learning technologies.

Dr. Dhabia M. Al Mohannadi is an Associate Professor at the College of Science and Engineering. Her work focuses on the systematic design of sustainable processes, resource management, and climate policies. Her research leads to developing analytical tools that can assess the flexibility, robustness, and reliability of process systems at the design and operational level including energy and circular systems.

Dhabia is an author of several publications including peer-reviewed journals, proceedings, and book chapters. She has won several research and teaching awards and serves on the board of several research programs, societies, and entities within Qatar. She is a graduate of the Qatar Leadership Center Rising Leaders Program.