Dr. Halima Bensmail obtained a PhD at the Pierre & Marie Currie University. She spent three years at the University of Washington and FHCRC as a postdoc and was a researcher in the Data Theory Group, University of Leiden. Dr. Halima held the positions of assistant and associate professor at the University of Tennessee and Virginia Medical School. Currently, she is a principal scientist at the Qatar Computing Research Institute and a joint associate professor at the College of Science and Engineering at HBKU. She is also a visiting professor at TAMU-Q.

Dr. Halima published more than 120 peer reviewed papers in high impact journals (Nature Communications, Nucleic Acids Research, Genome Research, Briefings in Bioinformatics, Bioinformatic among many). She has received numerous prestigious honors, taught numerous courses in Qatar, the US, and Europe, and mentored numerous Master's and PhD students. Dr. Halima has been Co-PI on several research grants in Qatar and abroad. She is a mentor for a $2 millions newly created center awarded by USDA grant agency to the obesity center in Texas Tech and serves as a reviewer for the NIH and NSF and is a board member of Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Technology Foundation, Davos and an AdCom representative of IEEE EMBs in MENA.