Sarra Mestiri holds a master's degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from the Sorbonne University of Paris. With over 7 years of research and academic experience spanning Tunisia, France, and Qatar, she has demonstrated expertise in biochemistry and molecular biology. While conducting research in France, Sarra identified novel NF-κB inhibitors through high throughput screening, offering potential regulation for diseases like cancer, auto-immune conditions, and chronic inflammation. Her work also delved into the ATR-CHK1 signaling pathway's role in DNA replication dynamics during replicative stress.

Relocating to Qatar in 2019, Sarra joined the Translational Cancer Research Facility at the National Center for Cancer Care and Research/Hamad Medical Corporation as a Research Associate. Her focus included characterizing immune responses in cancer patients, identifying dynamic biomarkers of response, and generating antigen-specific T cells for cancer therapy. In 2024, she became a Senior Research Associate in Dr. Fares Al-Ejeh's team, dedicating her efforts to identifying clinically actionable potential biomarkers in Qatar's population for Cancer Precision Medicine. With a commitment to advancing cancer research, Sarra Mestiri brings a wealth of experience and expertise to her current role.

Mohammad Shahmeer Ahmad is a Research Assistant at QCRI. His work focusses on Data Centric AI, Data Wrangling, and Foundation Models such as LLMs. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a B.Sc. in Information Systems. Shahmeer’s experience includes developing systematic approaches to improve data quality and discoverability and creating tools leveraging these algorithms. He has contributed to various projects such as a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system for tabular data for data wrangling and cleaning, a cross modality data discovery system for structured and unstructured data, and benchmarking the capabilities of LLMs in various data cleaning and querying tasks.

Born and raised in Argentina, Dr. Juan Manuel Murias completed his undergraduate degree in Physical Education and an MSc in Exercise Physiology in his hometown. After moving to Montreal, Canada in 2003, Juan Manuel completed a second MSc at McGill University, followed by a PhD in Integrative Physiology of Exercise (Western University, London, Canada) and Postdoctoral training focusing on vascular control at the same institution.

Following a 10-year appointment at the University of Calgary (Canada), in May 2023 Juan Manuel joined the College of Health and Life Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University as an Associate Professor. Juan Manuel’s research examines how adequate manipulation of the metabolic stress (i.e., intensity) of endurance exercise contributes to maximizing central (e.g., cardiac output, blood volume, conduit arteries) and peripheral (e.g., microcirculation, muscle metabolism) responses that affect cardiovascular components responsible for oxygen transport and distribution at rest and during exercise. Recent work also incorporates the evaluation of central and peripheral measures of neuromuscular fatigue. Although Juan Manuel’s work is applied to different groups ranging from clinical populations to trained individuals, his research has a special focus on how sex and age contribute to the characteristics of adaptations within the cardiovascular and neuromuscular systems.

Dr. Arafat earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Maryland in the United States. He subsequently worked there before joining the Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences at Cairo University in Egypt. Additionally, he gained experience by working at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in South Korea, and both Qatar University and Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar.

Dr. Arafat's research encompasses various topics within comparative politics and international relations, including multiculturalism, state fragility, personality cult, political reform in monocratic regimes, peacebuilding in protracted social conflicts, and decentralized conflicts.

Aisha Al-Qahtani holds a B.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Texas A&M University, an M.S. degree in biological and biomedical science and  Ph.D. in biological & biomedical science from (Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU).

Her research focuses on applying electrical engineering in the biomedical field; she was among the team that worked on the biosensor design in smart sensor design at HBKU. She has recently expanded her scope of research to focus more on computational biology in the Center for Artificial Intelligence at Qatar Computing Research Institute.
 

Dr. Mahmoud Alhirthani is an Assistant Professor of Translation and Intercultural Communication and an award-winning translator with over twenty-five years of extensive experience in the field. His career encompasses teaching translation, conducting research on translation and intercultural communication, and translating from English into Arabic.

He has published numerous refereed research papers and books in renowned and award-winning cultural venues both within and beyond the Arab world. As a translation educator and consultant, Dr. Alhirthani has taught a wide range of graduate-level courses, including literary translation, media translation, and discourse and communication analysis. He also has substantial experience in academic administration, leading study teams and teaching staff, organizing workshops, and serving on conference committees. His expertise extends to designing courses and programs for undergraduate and graduate students.

Dr. Alhirthani has supervised and refereed numerous postgraduate theses in translation and intercultural studies at both local and international institutions. His exceptional work as a translator earned him the prestigious Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding for his Arabic translation of Brownlie’s Principles of Public International Law, a monumental work comprising 1,328 pages.

Dr. Eltabakh is a Principal Scientist at Qatar Computer Research Institute (QCRI). He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Purdue University in 2010. He was a faculty member in the Computer Science Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), MA, USA, between 2011 and 2022. He has extensive industry-related experience working at Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Teradata (in the USA) for more than 8 years combined.   Dr. Mohamed Eltabakh’s research expertise spans the broad areas of big data management, scalable data analytics, AI and large language models, and distributed systems. Dr. Eltabakh is leading the Fanar project, an Arabic-centric GenAI platform developed in Qatar. Dr. Eltabakh’s research is funded by several entities, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), USA, the Ministry of Transportation (MoT), Qatar, and the Ministry of Interior (MoI), Qatar. 

Hanad Hassan is a seasoned finance leader with over 25 years of experience in various sectors, including private and public organizations, grant management, higher education, and government-funded projects. With an MBA and esteemed accounting certifications such as CPA, CGA, ACCA, and FCCA, Hanad brings valuable expertise to any organization, including his current senior leadership position at Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU).

Throughout his career, Hanad has demonstrated strong leadership skills, fostering collaboration among cross-functional teams and maintaining effective communication. His background in corporate finance and accounting management equips him to guide teams in achieving their maximum potential and performance. Hanad has worked with reputable companies such as Shoppers Drug Mart, Microsoft Canada, eHealth Ontario, College of North Atlantic Qatar, and Sidra Medicine. In addition, he worked with various projects funded by organizations such as the World Bank, World Health Organization, and European Union Budget Support. His diverse experience highlights his adaptability and ability to succeed in different environments and industries. Hanad's expertise in managing budgets ranging from 200 million to 2.5 billion Qatari Riyal underscores his proficiency in handling financial operations of varying sizes and complexities, making him a valuable asset to any financial management team.

Dr. Nadir Durrani is a Senior Scientist at the Arabic Language Technologies (ALT) where he works on several projects such as Interpretability (NeuroX), Machine Translation (Shaheen), Speech Synthesis (NatiQ) and language processing tools for Arabic (Farasa).

Dorde Popovic received his BSc degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, in 2022. He received the Andrew Carnegie Scholar Award at Carnegie Mellon University.

Before joining QCRI, Dorde’s research focused on federated learning and edge computing. His senior thesis was the runner-up for the Allen Newell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research at Carnegie Mellon University. It also won second place for the Best Project Award at the Meeting of the Minds Research Symposium.

Currently, his research projects focus on Trojan backdoor attacks and defenses in deep learning. Alongside his collaborators, Dorde developed a detection technique for these attacks that won second place and received the data-efficiency award in the Trojan Detection Challenge at NeurIPS 2022.