machine learning

KAUST-CEMSE-Public-Colloquium-Marco-Canini-Why-ML-Works-Its-Not-Magic

Why ML Works: It’s Not Magic, It’s Networked Systems Wizardry!

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Today’s machine learning (ML) solutions are achieving extraordinary success across diverse fields, thanks to their ability to learn complex models and deliver impressively accurate results. While the availability of big data is often credited as a driving force, the unsung hero behind ML’s rise is the rapid innovation in computing and software systems that make these breakthroughs possible and accessible.

Hayssam Dahrouj

Senior Research Scientist at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology)

Karen Sanchez

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Karen Sanchez is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the IVUL lab at KAUST, specializing in deep learning, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) for healthcare applications. Her research focuses on video understanding, domain adaptation, generative AI, and methods for preserving patient privacy.

Hani A. Al Majed

M.S. Student
Electrical and Computer Engineering Master's student at KAUST under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem, with expertise in machine learning workflow automation, physics-informed neural operators, and AI for Science, particularly in chemistry applications. Passionate about leveraging AI to solve complex scientific problems.

Ahmad Sait

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Ahmad Sait is a Master's student in the Computer Science program at KAUST. Before joining KAUST, Ahmad obtained his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. Ahmad is also a KAUST Academy graduate from the AI track, having been under the supervision of Prof. Naeemullah Khan. The Academy provided him with seven opportunities to assist in teaching students enrolled in subsequent cohorts.

Saleh AlJazzar

Research Fellow at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) .

Muhammad Esmat

Visiting student at, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Ebrahim Al-Safadi

Intern, Information Science Lab at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST),

Yasser Jaber

Visiting Student Researcher ,Machine Learning Engineer at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology).
Syed Abidullah Fareed

Syed Abidullah Fareed

Visiting Student (former), Information Science Lab

Ahsan Mehmood

Intern (former), Information Science Lab
Visiting student at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Abdulkarem Badiea Alshaibani

Visiting Student at the Information Science Lab at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Applied Mathematics School 2024

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The KAUST Applied Mathematics School is a 1-week visiting program aiming to introduce undergraduate and master's students to special research topics focusing on key areas in applied mathematics and computational science.

Advanced Breach and Attack Simulation using ML

Cybersecurity is becoming a need more than ever. Organizations need to protect their digital assets and are required to earn certifications to prove the compliance to the regulations and rules. For this, these assets must be assessed to ensure the target security posture and to get certified or pass an audit on yearly basis. This is a daunting and costly task as it often requires a third-party tester that tries to penetrate the system, under agreement. Breach and Attack Simulation is a new method that allows to do this penetration testing in-house, using some automation tools. Some of these

Novel Data Mining Methods for Virtual Screening of Biological Active Chemical Compounds by Othman Soufan

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H2 B9

Abstract Drug discovery is a process that takes many years and hundreds of millions of dollars to reveal a con dent conclusion about a specific treatment. Part of this sophisticated process is based on preliminary investigations to suggest a set of chemical compounds as candidate drugs for the treatment. Computational resources have been playing a significant role in this part through a step known as virtual screening. From a data mining perspective, the availability of rich data resources is key in training prediction models. Yet, the difficulties imposed by big expansion in data and its

Contributions to In Silico Genome Annotation

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B3 L5 R5209

Abstract Genome annotation is an important topic since it provides information for the foundation of downstream genomic and biological research. It is considered as a way of summarizing part of existing knowledge about the genomic characteristics of an organism. Annotating different regions of a genome sequence is known as structural annotation while identifying functions of these regions are considered as a functional annotation. In silico approaches can facilitate both tasks that otherwise would be difficult and time-consuming. This study contributes to genome annotation by introducing

Mining Genome-Scale Growth Phenotype Data through Constant-Column Biclustering

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B3 L5 R5209

Growth phenotype profiling of genome-wide gene-deletion strains overstresses conditions can offer a clear picture that the essentiality of genes depends on environmental conditions. In this dissertation, we first demonstrate that detecting such "co-fit" gene groups can be cast as a less well-studied problem in biclustering, i.e., constant-column biclustering. Despite significant advances in biclustering techniques, very few were designed for mining in growth phenotype data.

Computational Methods for ChIP-seq Data Analysis and Applications

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B3 L5 5209

Abstract The development of Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing (ChIP-seq) technology has enabled the construction of genome-wide maps of protein-DNA interaction. Such maps provide information about transcriptional regulation at the epigenetic level (histone modifications and histone variants) and at the level of transcription factor (TF) activity. This dissertation presents novel computational methods for ChIP-seq data analysis and applications. The work of this dissertation addresses four main challenges. First, I address the problem of detecting histone modifications from

Novel Computational Methods to Predict Drug–target Interactions Using Graph Mining and Machine Learning Approaches

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B3 L5 R5220

Abstract Computational drug repurposing aims at finding new medical uses for existing drugs. The identification of novel drug-target interactions (DTIs) can be a useful part of such a task. Finding computationally DTIs is a convenient strategy to identify potentially new DTIs at low cost with reasonable accuracy. However, the current DTI prediction methods suffer a high false positive prediction rate. Here, we present a comprehensive review of the recent progress in the field of DTI prediction from data-centric and algorithmic-centric perspectives that can help in constructing novel reliable

Genetic Algorithms for Optimization of Machine-learning Models and their Applications in Bioinformatics

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B3 L5 R5209

Abstract ​​​Machine-learning (ML) techniques have been widely applied to solve different problems in biology. However, biological data are large and complex, which often results in extremely intricate ML models. Frequently, these models may have poor performance or may be computationally unfeasible. This study presents a set of novel computational methods and focuses on the application of genetic algorithms (GAs) for the simplification and optimization of ML models and their applications to biological problems. The dissertation addresses the following three challenges. The first challenge is

Novel Computational Methods that Facilitate Development of Cyanofactories for Free Fatty Acid Production by Olaa Motwalli

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B3 L5 R5209

Abstract Finding a source from which high-energy-density biofuels can be derived at an industrial scale has become an urgent challenge for renewable energy production. Some microorganisms can produce free fatty acids (FFA) as precursors towards such high-energy-density biofuels. In particular, photosynthetic cyanobacteria are capable of directly converting carbon dioxide into FFA. However, current engineered strains need several rounds of engineering to reach the level of FFA production for it to be commercially viable. Thus, new chassis strains that require less engineering are needed

AI4GH Seminar Series - Machine Learning with Biological Knowledge Graphs

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B2 R5220

Abstract Biological data and knowledge bases increasingly rely on Semantic Web technologies and the use of knowledge graphs for data integration, retrieval, and federated queries. In the past years, feature learning methods that are applicable to graph-structured data are becoming available, but have not yet widely been applied and evaluated on structured biological knowledge. We develop novel methods for feature learning on biological knowledge graphs and apply them to the prediction of edges in the knowledge graph representing problems of finding candidate genes of diseases, or drugs

KAUST Research Workshop on Optimization and Big Data

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B19 L3 H2

The age of "big data" is here: data of unprecedented sizes is becoming ubiquitous, which brings new challenges and new opportunities. With this comes the need to solve optimization problems of unprecedented sizes.

Bio2Vec Kickoff Meeting

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Paris France

​​Research Scientist Senay Kafkas will be attending the Bio2Vec kickoff meeting in Paris, France.

Neural Inductive Matrix Factorization for Predicting Disease-Gene Associations

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B3 R5208

In silico prioritization of undiscovered associations can help find causal genes of newly discovered diseases. Some existing methods are based on known associations and side information of diseases and genes. We exploit the possibility of using a neural network model, Neural Inductive Matrix Completion (NIMC) in disease-gene prediction.

AI4GH Seminar Series - Variant Prioritization in Cancer: Understanding and Prediction of Cancer Driver Genes and Mutations

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B2 R5220

Sequencing has identified millions of somatic mutations in human cancers. Identifying and distinguishing cancer driver genes amongst the millions of candidate mutations remains a major challenge.

Contributions to Computational Methods for Association Extraction from Biomedical Data: Applications to Text Mining and In Silico Toxicology

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B2 L5 R5220

Abstract The task of association extraction involves identifying links between different entities. Here, we make contributions to two applications related to the biomedical field. The first application is in the domain of text mining aiming at extracting associations between methylated genes and diseases from biomedical literature. Gathering such associations can benefit disease diagnosis and treatment decisions. We developed the DDMGD database to provide a comprehensive repository of information related to genes methylated in diseases, gene expression, and disease progression. Using DEMGD, a

AI4GH Seminar Series - Vector Representation of Biological Entities Based on Ontologies and Their Annotations

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B2 R5220

Biological knowledge is widely represented in the form of ontology-based annotations: ontologies describe the phenomena assumed to exist within a domain, and the annotations associate a biological entity with a set of phenomena within the domain.

Towards rational design of biosynthesis pathways

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B3 R5209

Recent advances in genome editing and metabolic engineering enabled a precise construction of de novo biosynthesis pathways for high-value natural products. One important design decision to make for the engineering of heterologous biosynthesis systems is concerned with which foreign metabolic genes to introduce into a given host organism.

Prediction of active and inactive chemical compounds from high-throughput assays

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B5 L5 R5209

Abstract This study considers chemical compounds that can exert their activity by interacting with a target protein or other molecular receptor. Our aim is to develop machine learning models that can predict if a chemical compound will be active in a particular test/assay. We will use data from assays that are present in the PubChem knowledge base, specifically in its segment called BioAssays which reports the results of many high-throughput screening experiments. PubChem BioAssays is a valuable resource that contains information from a large number of experiments. In one assay, sometimes many

AI4GH Seminar Series - Towards Rational Design of Biosynthesis Pathways

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B2 R5220

Recent advances in genome editing and metabolic engineering enabled a precise construction of de novo biosynthesis pathways for high-value natural products. One important design decision to make for the engineering of heterologous biosynthesis systems is concerned with which foreign metabolic genes to introduce into a given host organism.

Variant Prioritization in Cancer: Understanding and Prediction of Cancer Driver Genes and Mutations

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B3 R5209

Abstract Sequencing has identified millions of somatic mutations in human cancers. Identifying and distinguishing cancer driver genes amongst the millions of candidate mutations remains a major challenge. Accurate identification of driver genes and driver mutations is critical for advancing cancer research and personalizing treatment based on accurate stratification of patients. Due to inter-tumor genetic heterogeneity, many driver mutations within a gene occur at low frequencies, which make it challenging to distinguish them from other non-driver mutations. Motivated by these challenges, we

VSIM: Visualization and Simulation of Genomes for Premarital Testing

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B3 L5 R5209

Abstract Interpretation and simulation of the large-scale genomics data are very challenging, and currently, many web tools have been developed to analyze genomic variation which supports automated visualization of a variety of high throughput genomics data. We have developed VSIM an automated and easy to use web application for interpretation and visualization of a variety of genomics data, it identifies the candidate disease variants by referencing to four databases Clinvar, GWAS, DIDA, and PharmGKB, and predicted the pathogenic variants. Moreover, it investigates the attitude towards

AI4GH Seminar Series - Genome-scale Regression Analysis Reveals a Linear Relationship for Promoters and Enhancers After Combinatorial Drug Treatment

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B2 R5220

Drug combination therapy for the treatment of cancers and other multifactorial diseases has the potential of increasing the therapeutic effect while reducing the likelihood of drug resistance. In order to reduce the time and cost spent on comprehensive screens, methods are needed which can model additive effects of possible drug combinations.

AI4GH Seminar Series - VSIM: Visualization and Simulation of Genomes for Premarital Testing

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B2 R5220

Interpretation and simulation of the large-scale genomics data are very challenging, and currently, many web tools have been developed to analyze genomic variation which supports automated visualization of a variety of high throughput genomics data.

The Evolution of Machine Learning

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B4 B5 A0215

This talk presents an overview of recent methodological advances in developing item-based nearest-neighbor-based recommender systems that have substantially improved their performance. Biography George Karypis is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and an ADC Chair of Digital Technology at the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His research interests span the areas of data mining, high performance computing, information retrieval, collaborative filtering, bioinformatics, cheminformatics, and scientific computing. His research has

Semantic Prioritization of Novel Causative Genomic Variants in Mendelian and Oligogenic Diseases

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B9 R4223

Abstract Recent advances in Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies have facilitated the generation of massive amounts of genomic data which in turn is bringing the promise that personalized medicine will soon become widely available. As a result, there is an increasing pressure to develop computational tools to analyze and interpret genomic data. In this dissertation, we present a systematic approach for interrogating patients' genomes to identify candidate causal genomic variants of Mendelian and oligogenic diseases. To achieve that, we leverage the use of biomedical data available

Biomedical Signal Processing using the Squared Eigenfunctions of the Schrödinger Operator and Machine Learning

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B1 B4 B4214

Abstract The health of a human body is monitored through several physiological measurements such as the heart rate, the blood pressure, the oxygen saturation levels, brain activity, etc. These measurements are taken at predefined points in the body and recorded as temporal signals or colorful images. During the diagnosis phase, physicians analyze these records visually (sometimes it is not visual with the progress in medicine, better to say: sometimes visually) to take treatment decisions. These records are usually contaminated with noise. The origin of this noise may be diverse. For instance

ML Hub Seminar Series | The Machine Learning (ML) Hub

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B9 H2 R2325

The Machine Learning Hub @ KAUST is designed to be the one-stop-shop for machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) at KAUST. It is an informal forum for exchanging ideas in these areas, including (but not limited to) theoretical foundations, systems, tools, and applications. It will be providing several offerings to the KAUST community interested in ML and AI, including a regular seminar series where new research in the field is presented, an online social forum dedicated to AI and ML discussions, announcements, brainstorming, collaborations, and hands-on activities (e.g

Deep Predictive Models for Mining Electronic Health Records

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B1 L4 R4214

There is an increasing growth in the amount of electronic health records (EHRs) being collected by healthcare facilities. Data mining techniques hold great potential to systematically use such data for identifying not only inefficiencies but also best practices that improve care and reduce costs. However, due to the complexity of EHR data, directly applying traditional machine learning techniques may yield unsatisfactory predictive performance. Recent advances in deep learning-based methods provide unprecedented ability to predict patients’ future health status, but they still suffer from the sparsity issue of EHR data.

Convolutional Neural Networks on Graphs

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B9 H2

In the past years, deep learning methods have achieved unprecedented performance on a broad range of problems in various fields from computer vision to speech recognition. So far research has mainly focused on developing deep learning methods for grid-structured data, while many important applications have to deal with graph-structured data.

Day 2 - Deep learning and the latest algorithms in artificial intelligence

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B4 B5 A0215

The ML Hub offers a 2-day short course on deep learning and the latest algorithms in artificial intelligence. The course will be given by Professor Xavier Bresson from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, who is a leading researcher in the field of deep learning. The course will include the theory of deep learning techniques as well as practical exercises. Prerequisite knowledge: Basic knowledge of linear algebra (e.g. matrix multiplication) and script programming (e.g. Python, Matlab, R) are needed. The coding will be done in Python. Note, that this course has limited seating and filling registration form does not guarantee acceptance. If you are selected, you will receive a confirmation e-mail.

From Bioinformatics to Translational and Health Informatics: Whitening the Black Box

Prof. Yasser EL-Manzalawy, Information Sciences and Technology, Pennsylvania State University

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B9 H1

Machine learning has been extensively used in developing predictive models for a variety of bioinformatics tools. In many of these applications, to achieve the highest possible predictive performance, black box models (e.g., SVMs and Neural Networks) had been preferred over white box models (e.g., Decision Trees and Rule-based models). First, I argue that sacrificing interpretability for the sake of performance is a reasonable decision for many bioinformatics applications. However, I will demonstrate that uncareful utilization of black box models can lead to misinterpretations of the results.

Day 1 - Deep learning and the latest algorithms in artificial intelligence

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B4 B5 A0215

The ML Hub offers a 2-day short course on deep learning and the latest algorithms in artificial intelligence. The course will be given by Professor Xavier Bresson from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, who is a leading researcher in the field of deep learning. The course will include the theory of deep learning techniques as well as practical exercises. Prerequisite knowledge: Basic knowledge of linear algebra (e.g. matrix multiplication) and script programming (e.g. Python, Matlab, R) are needed. The coding will be done in Python. Note, that this course has limited seating and filling registration form does not guarantee acceptance. If you are selected, you will receive a confirmation e-mail.

Sim-to-Real Transfer for Autonomous Navigation

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B2 L5 R5220

This work investigates the problem of transfer from simulation to the real world in the context of autonomous navigation. To this end, we first present a photo-realistic training and evaluation simulator Sim4CV which enables several applications across various fields of computer vision. Built on top of the Unreal Engine, the simulator features cars and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with a realistic physics simulation and diverse urban and suburban 3D environments. We demonstrate the versatility of the simulator with two case studies: autonomous UAV-based tracking of moving objects and autonomous driving using supervised learning.

Random Matrix Theory: Selected Applications from Statistical Signal Processing and Machine Learning

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B1 L4 R4214

Random matrix theory is an outstanding mathematical tool that has demonstrated its usefulness in many areas ranging from wireless communication to finance and economics. The main motivation behind its use comes from the fundamental role that random matrices play in modeling unknown and unpredictable physical quantities. In many situations, meaningful metrics expressed as scalar functionals of these random matrices arise naturally. Along this line, the present work consists in leveraging tools from random matrix theory in an attempt to answer fundamental questions related to applications from statistical signal processing and machine learning.

Traffic Monitoring and MAC-Layer Design for Future IoT Systems

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B1 L4 R4214

The advances in the technology and the emergence of low complexity intelligent devices result in the evolution of the Internet-of-Things (IoT). One of the most important resources is the wireless channel, which is a shared resource; thus, it is necessary for the nodes to have methods that schedule channel access. This thesis considers the problem of distributed sensing and channel access in the context of IoT systems, where a set of selfish nodes competes for transmission opportunities. In the channel access part, a memory-one channel access game is proposed to reduce the collision rate, to enhance the cooperation among the nodes, and to maximize their payoffs by optimizing their channel access probabilities, based on the channel state in the previous time step.

Wireless Network Intelligence @ the Edge

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B1 L3 R3119

In just a few years, breakthroughs in machine learning (ML) and particularly deep learning have transformed every aspects of our lives from face recognition, medical diagnosis, and natural language processing. This progress has been fueled mainly by the availability of more data and more computing power. However, the current premise in classical ML is based on a single node in a centralized and remote data center with full access to a global dataset and a massive amount of storage and computing, sifting through this data for inference.

Modern Techniques of Statistical Optimization for Machine Learning

Tong Zhang, Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics, HKUST

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B9 H1

Many problems in machine learning rely on statistics and optimization. To solve these problems, new techniques are needed. I will show some of these new techniques through selected machine learning problems I have recently worked on, such as nonconvex stochastic optimization, distributed training, adversarial attack, and generative models.

Efficient Localization of Human Actions and Moments in Videos

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B3 L5 R5220

Abstract We are stumbling across a video tsunami flooding our communication channels. The ubiquity of digital cameras and social networks has increased the amount of visual media content generated and shared by people, in particular videos. Cisco reports that 82% of the internet traffic would be in the form of videos by 2022. The computer vision community has embraced this challenge by offering the first building blocks to translate the visual data in segmented video clips into semantic tags. However, users usually require to go beyond tagging at the video level. For example, someone may want

Zero in on computational challenges in Nanopore sequencing

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B9 L2 H1

In this talk, I will first give an overview of the research activities in Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (http://sfb.kaust.edu.sa). I will then focus on our efforts on developing computational methods to tackle key open problems in Nanopore sequencing. In particular, I will introduce our recent works on developing a collection of computational methods to decode raw electrical current signal sequences into DNA sequences, to simulate raw signals of Nanopore, and to efficiently and accurately align electrical current signal sequences with DNA sequences. Then, I will further introduce their applications in clinical and environmental fields.

Reproducibility in Computer Science - Part 1

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B9 L3 R3223

Roy Maxion will give three lectures focusing broadly on different aspects of an increasingly important topic: reproducibility. Reproducibility tests the reliability of an experimental result and is one of the foundations of the entire scientific enterprise. We often hear that certain foods are good for you, and a few years later we learn that they're not. A series of results in cancer research was examined to see if they were reproducible. A startling number of them - 47 out of 53 - were not. Matters of reproducibility are now cropping up in computer science, and given the importance of computing in the world, it's essential that our own results are reproducible -- perhaps especially the ones based on complex models or data sets, and artificial intelligence or machine learning. This lecture series will expose attendees to several issues in ensuring reproducibility, with the goal of teaching students (and others) some of the crucial aspects of making their own science reproducible. Hint: it goes much farther than merely making your data available to the public.

Langevin Monte Carlo as an optimization algorithm

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B9 L2 H1 R2322

Adil Salim is mainly interested in stochastic approximation, optimization, and machine learning. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with Professor Peter Richtarik at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Reproducibility in Computer Science - Part 2

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B9 L3 R3223

Roy Maxion will give three lectures focusing broadly on different aspects of an increasingly important topic: reproducibility. Reproducibility tests the reliability of an experimental result and is one of the foundations of the entire scientific enterprise. We often hear that certain foods are good for you, and a few years later we learn that they're not. A series of results in cancer research was examined to see if they were reproducible. A startling number of them - 47 out of 53 - were not. Matters of reproducibility are now cropping up in computer science, and given the importance of computing in the world, it's essential that our own results are reproducible -- perhaps especially the ones based on complex models or data sets, and artificial intelligence or machine learning. This lecture series will expose attendees to several issues in ensuring reproducibility, with the goal of teaching students (and others) some of the crucial aspects of making their own science reproducible. Hint: it goes much farther than merely making your data available to the public.

Machine Learning Models for Context Aware Recommendation Systems

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B3 L5 R5209

The goal of this thesis is to pave the way towards the next generation of recommendation systems tackling such real-world challenges to improve the user experience while giving good recommendations.

Reproducibility in Computer Science - Part 3

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B9 L3 R3223

Roy Maxion will give three lectures focusing broadly on different aspects of an increasingly important topic: reproducibility. Reproducibility tests the reliability of an experimental result and is one of the foundations of the entire scientific enterprise. We often hear that certain foods are good for you, and a few years later we learn that they're not. A series of results in cancer research was examined to see if they were reproducible. A startling number of them - 47 out of 53 - were not. Matters of reproducibility are now cropping up in computer science, and given the importance of computing in the world, it's essential that our own results are reproducible -- perhaps especially the ones based on complex models or data sets, and artificial intelligence or machine learning. This lecture series will expose attendees to several issues in ensuring reproducibility, with the goal of teaching students (and others) some of the crucial aspects of making their own science reproducible. Hint: it goes much farther than merely making your data available to the public.

Practical Cryptographic Framework to Manage Security and Privacy for IoT Endpoint devices

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B1 L4 R4214

In this talk, the speaker will provide a high-level introduction to his recent research on IoT endpoint security. Firstly, he will introduce requirements followed by a discussion on cryptographic algorithm implementation. He will mainly focus on an overview of efficient cryptography for IoT endpoints and system privacy issues. Then he will discuss security management approaches, positives, negatives and challenges to resolve, linking to the endpoint device security section with regards to realistic device needs/capabilities.

Seeing is Believing? Media Integrity in a Post-Truth World

Prof. Nasir Memon, Vice Dean for Academics and Student Affairs and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering

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B9 L2 H1

The emergence of “fake news” along with sophisticated techniques using machine learning to create realistic looking media such as deepfakes, has led to a renewed interest in digital media forensics. In this talk, Professor Nasir Memon will broadly discuss how media is generated and manipulations have been traditionally detected. He will then look at new approaches using machine learning for creating media that are leading us to a world where images and video cannot be believed any more as they can evade traditional detection techniques. Professor Memon will end by discussing approaches that are being developed to return integrity and trust in digital media.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) ML Immersion Day

Mohib Khan, Hesham Abouelmagd, Shijaz Abdulla (AWS)

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B19 H1

The ML Hub with the support of the AI Initiative, is excited to be hosting the AWS ML Immersion Day! Join us for a full-day immersion tutorial and hands-on lab on Amazon’s ML tools. The program includes an introduction to AWS AI and machine learning services and hands-on module on Amazon Lex and SageMaker.

Dynamics and Convergence of Weight Normalization for Training Neural Networks

Guido Montufar, Assistant Professor, Departments of Mathematics and Statistics, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

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B1 L3 R3119

We present a result on the convergence of weight normalized training of artificial neural networks. In the analysis, we consider over-parameterized 2-layer networks with rectified linear units (ReLUs) initialized at random and trained with batch gradient descent and a fixed step size. The proof builds on recent theoretical works that bound the trajectory of parameters from their initialization and monitor the network predictions via the evolution of a ''neural tangent kernel'' (Jacot et al. 2018). We discover that training with weight normalization decomposes such a kernel via the so called ''length-direction decoupling''. This in turn leads to two convergence regimes. From the modified convergence we make a few curious observations including a natural form of ''lazy training'' where the direction of each weight vector remains stationary.

Machine Learning Scan of Complete Genome Sequences of 4,500 Rice Varieties reveals Secrets in the Domestication Process of Crops

Takashi Gojobori, Distinguished Professor, Bioscience

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B9 L2 H2 R2325

In the history of humankind, domestication was invented as anthropogenic evolution that fulfills mankind’s critical food demand. The domestication is simply based on mating processes and subsequent selection processes to pick up better hybrid offspring that have advantageous combinations of genomes. Taking advantage of machine learning classifier, we discovered a number of sub-genomic regions that have been incorporated in the rice genomes through production of hybrid offspring during domestication. This so-called “introgression” event is disclosed as an essential key of domestication process. This eventually leads to construction of the AI-aided Smart Breeding Platform to accumulate all the breeding histories of crop species into an Integrated Breeding Knowledgebase.

Novel computational methods for promoter identification and analysis

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B2 L5 R5209

In this dissertation, I present the methods I have developed for prediction of promoters for different organisms. Instead of focusing on the classification accuracy of the discrimination between promoter and non-promoter sequences, I predict the exact positions of the TSS inside the genomic sequences, testing every possible location. The developed methods significantly outperform the previous promoter prediction programs by considerably reducing the number of false positive predictions. Specifically, to reduce the false positive rate, the models are adaptively and iteratively trained by changing the distribution of samples in the training set based on the false positive errors made in the previous iteration. The new methods are used to gain insights into the design principles of the core promoters. Using model analysis, I have identified the most important core promoter elements and their effect on the promoter activity. I have developed a novel general approach to detect long range interactions in the input of a deep learning model, which was used to find related positions inside the promoter region. The final model was applied to the genomes of different species without a significant drop in the performance, demonstrating a high generality of the developed method.

Understanding a Block of Layers in Deep Neural Networks: Optimization, Probabilistic and Tropical Geometric Perspectives

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KAUST

In this dissertation, we aim at theoretically studying and analyzing deep learning models. Since deep models substantially vary in their shapes and sizes, in this dissertation, we restrict our work to a single fundamental block of layers that is common in almost all architectures. The block of layers of interest is the composition of an affine layer followed by a nonlinear activation function and then lastly followed by another affine layer. We study this block of layers from three different perspectives. (i) An Optimization Perspective. We try addressing the following question: Is it possible that the output of the forward pass through the block of layers highlighted above is an optimal solution to a certain convex optimization problem? As a result, we show an equivalency between the forward pass through this block of layers and a single iteration of certain types of deterministic and stochastic algorithms solving a particular class of tensor formulated convex optimization problems.

Visible Light Communications Technology and Machine Learning - 2020-10-20

Paul Anthony Haigh, Newcastle University, United Kingdom and Dr. Bo Tan, Tampere University, Finland

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KAUST

In this webinar we will give an overview of several key technologies related to our special issues in Frontiers of Communications and Networks; (1) visible light communications (VLC) and (2) applications of machine learning in optical and wireless communication systems.

Challenges in Marine Autonomy

Stefan B. Williams, Head of School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, University of Sydney

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KAUST

Featured Sessions
For more information please visit the website

Stylistic and spatial disentanglement in GANs

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KAUST

This dissertation tackles the problem of entanglement in Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). The key insight is that disentanglement in GANs can be improved by differentiating between the content, and the operations performed on that content. For example, the identity of a generated face can be thought of as the content, while the lighting conditions can be thought of as the operations.

On Recently Developed Non-Gaussian Priors and Sampling Methods with Application to Industrial Tomography

Prof. Lassi Roininen, Applied Mathematics, LUT University

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B1 L4 R4214

We consider two sets of new priors for Bayesian inversion and machine learning: The first one is based on mixture of experts models with Gaussian processes. The target is to estimate the number of experts and their parameters, and to make state estimation. For sampling, we use SMC^2. For non-Gaussian priors, we discuss Cauchy priors and the generalisation to high-order Cauchy fields and further generalisation to alpha-stable fields. For sampling, we use a selection of modern MCMC tools. Finally, we apply some of the methods and models to an industrial tomography problem on estimating log internal structure, measured at sawmills, based on X-ray, RGB camera and laser scanning.

Rising Stars in AI Symposium 2022 at KAUST

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B4 B5 A0215

Rising Stars in AI Symposium 2022 at KAUST The "Rising Stars in AI Symposium" is geared towards young researchers (including PhD students, PostDocs, young faculty) who have recently published promising work at leading venues. There will be dozens of brief in-person presentations about papers recently accepted at major AI conferences such as NeurIPS, CVPR, EMNLP, ACL, ICML, ICLR, etc. All speakers will be encouraged to start with an intro for non-AI experts. To view the complete program and for more event details, please visit the symposium website. Attend the Symposium The symposium will be

Omics-based Metastasis Prediction using Machine Learning and Deep Learning

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KAUST

Knowing metastasis is the primary cause of cancer-related deaths incentivized research to unravel the complex cellular processes that drive the metastasis. Advancement in technology and specifically the advent of high-throughput sequencing provides knowledge of such processes. This knowledge led to the development of therapeutic and clinical applications. In this regard, predicting metastasis onset has also been explored using artificial intelligence (AI) approaches that are machine learning (ML), and more recently, deep learning (DL).

High-dimensional Regression and Dictionary Learning: Some Recent Advances for Tensor Data

Prof. Waheed Bajwa, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University-New Brunswick

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B1 L3 R3119

Data in many modern signal processing, machine learning, and statistics problems tend to have tensor (aka, multidimensional / multiway array) structure. While traditional approaches to processing of such data involve 'flattening' of data samples into vectors, it has long been realized that explicit exploitation of tensor structure of data can lead to improved performance. Recent years, in particular, have witnessed a flurry of research activity centered around development of computational algorithms for improved processing of tensor data.

To Encourage or to Restrict: the Label Dependency in Multi-Label Learning

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KAUST

Multi-label learning addresses the problem that one instance can be associated with multiple labels simultaneously. More or less, these labels are usually dependent on each other in different ways. Understanding and exploiting the Label Dependency (LD) is well-accepted as the key to build high-performance multi-label classifiers, i.e., classifiers having abilities including but not limited to generalizing well on clean data and being robust under evasion attack.

CBRC Dual Seminar - Analysis of COVID-19 Severity - DeepSVP computational method

Sakhaa Al-Saedi, PhD Student; Azza Althagafi, PhD Student

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KAUST

Sakhaa Al-Saedi: We conduct a systematic genetic analysis of risk variants related to increasing the severity of COVID-19. It leads to a better understanding of its genetic basis and identifies the host genes to be targeted to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and reduce its death toll. Azza Althagafi: We developed DeepSVP, a computational method to prioritize structural variants involved in genetic diseases by combining genomic and gene functions information. DeepSVP significantly improves the success rate of finding causative variants in several benchmarks and can identify novel pathogenic structural variants in consanguineous families.

Drug Repositioning through the Development of Diverse Computational Methods using Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Graph Mining

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KAUST

In this dissertation, we combined artificial intelligence and machine/deep learning with chemical and biological properties to develop several computational methods to solve biomedical domain problems, specifically drug repositioning, and demonstrated their efficiencies and capabilities. We developed three network-based DTI prediction methods using machine learning, graph embedding, and graph mining. These methods significantly improved prediction performance, and the best-performing method even reduces the error rate by more than 33% across all datasets compared to the best state-of-the-art method. As it is more insightful to predict continuous values that indicate how tightly the drug binds to a specific target, we conducted a comparison study of current regression-based methods that predict drug-target binding affinities (DTBA). Our methods demonstrated their efficiency and capability by achieving high prediction performance and identifying therapeutic targets for several cancer types. We further conducted a lung cancer case study of findings that support the novel predicted targets.

Communication-Efficient Distributed Newton-type Algorithms for Federated Learning

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B9 L2 R2322 H1

In this talk, I will discuss communication compression and aggregation mechanisms for curvature information in order to reduce these costs while preserving theoretically superior local convergence guarantees.

Designing High-Performance and Scalable Middleware for HPC, AI, and Data Science

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B9 L2 R2322 H1

This talk will focus on challenges and opportunities in designing middleware for HPC, AI (Deep/Machine Learning), and Data Science. We will start with the challenges in designing runtime environments for MPI+X programming models by considering support for multi-core systems, high-performance networks (InfiniBand and RoCE), GPUs, and emerging BlueField-2 DPUs. Features and sample performance numbers of using the MVAPICH2 libraries will be presented. For the Deep/Machine Learning domain, we will focus on MPI-driven solutions to extract performance and scalability for popular Deep Learning frameworks (TensorFlow and PyTorch), large out-of-core models, and Bluefield-2 DPUs.

Optimal Algorithms for Affinely Constrained, Distributed, Decentralized, Minimax, and High-Order Optimization Problems

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B5 R5220

In this thesis, we discuss a few fundamental and well-studied optimization problem classes: decentralized distributed optimization (Chapters 2 to 4), distributed optimization under similarity (Chapter 5), affinely constrained optimization (Chapter 6), minimax optimization (Chapter 7), and high-order optimization (Chapter 8). For each problem class, we develop the first provably optimal algorithm: the complexity of such an algorithm cannot be improved for the problem class given. The proposed algorithms show state-of-the-art performance in practical applications, which makes them highly attractive for potential generalizations and extensions in the future.

A new class of random field models for data on networks

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B9 L2 R2322 H1

Random fields are popular models in statistics and machine learning for spatially dependent data on Euclidian domains. However, in many applications, data is observed on non-Euclidian domains such as street networks. In this case, it is much more difficult to construct valid random field models. In this talk, we discuss some recent approaches to modeling data in this setting, and in particular define a new class of Gaussian processes on compact metric graphs.

On the resolution of a theoretical question related to the nature of local training in federated learning

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B1 L3 R3119

In this talk, I will explain the problem, its solution, and some subsequent work generalizing, extending and improving the ProxSkip method in various ways. We study distributed optimization methods based on the local training (LT) paradigm - achieving improved communication efficiency by performing richer local gradient-based training on the clients before parameter averaging - which is of key importance in federated learning. Looking back at the progress of the field in the last decade, we identify 5 generations of LT methods: 1) heuristic, 2) homogeneous, 3) sublinear, 4) linear, and 5) accelerated. The 5th generation, initiated by the ProxSkip method of Mishchenko et al (2022) and its analysis, is characterized by the first theoretical confirmation that LT is a communication acceleration mechanism.

Applied AI for sustainable development

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B9 L2 R2322 H1

Skoltech Applied AI center’s mission is to create AI models and frameworks for solving the problems of sustainable development of industry and economy. In my presentation, I will overview the current center's activities, applied and fundamental problem statements, and corresponding recent results.

Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Device Design via Machine Learning

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B2 L5 R5220

This dissertation presents novel approaches to the design of electrical and optical wide bandgap semiconductor devices, which opens new avenues for future research. It is possible that it might be used in a broad variety of sectors, including illumination, sensing, disinfection, and power devices by using TCAD and machine learning to deliver quick forecasts of the III-nitride semiconductor device.

Embedded and Cyber Connected Systems (ECCS) Workshop

Prof. Ahmed Eltawil, Prof. Charalambos Konstantinou, Prof. Khaled Nabil Salama

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B2 L5 R5220

The workshop aims to bring together experts to present their latest research efforts related to Embedded and Cyber Connected Systems architectures and platforms that can scale efficiently, as well as operate securely and resiliently to provide the necessary resources demanded by current and future network applications.

Machine learning in hardware via trained metasurface encoders: theory, design and applications

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B2 L5 R5209

In this thesis, we introduce a novel concept of metasurface optical accelerators for machine learning with the corresponding end-to-end optimization framework that is robust to fabrication intolerance and can simultaneously optimize in tens of millions of degrees of freedom. The core of this technology is universal approximators, a single surface of optical nanoresonators mathematically equivalent to a single layer of an artificial neural network (ANN).

Parameter-Free Online Optimization: Past, Present, and Future

Francesco Orabona, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University

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B9 L2 R2322

Parameter-free online optimization is a class of algorithms that does not require tuning hyperparameters, yet they achieve the theoretical optimal performance. Moreover, they often achieve state-of-the-art performance too. An example would be gradient descent algorithms completely without learning rates. In this talk, I review my past and present contributions to this field. Building upon a fundamental idea connecting optimization, gambling, and information theory, I discuss selected applications of parameter-free algorithms to machine learning and statistics. Finally, we conclude with an overview of the future directions of this field.

Characterization of Natural Bacterial Pathogens with Genomic and Predictive Modelling

Dr. Danesh Moradigaravand, Infectious Disease Epidemiology lab, BESE, KAUST

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B3 L5 R5209

In this talk, I will first present how the application of phylogenetic and phylodynamic methods to whole genome sequencing data of multidrug resistant bacterial pathogens provided an in-depth understanding of the epidemiology and evolution of these strains on epidemiological time scales. I will then discuss the characterization of the genomic repertoire of bacterial traits using a combination of machine learning, whole genome sequencing and large-scale phenotypic assays. I will then present the leverage of predictive modelling to predict bacterial features, e.g. antimicrobial resistance, growth, and horizontal gene transfer, from genomic biomarkers. I will finally discuss how large-scale phenotypic assays enabled us to identity genes underlying morphogenesis and biofilm formation.

The Wild West of NLP Modeling, Evaluation, and Documentation

Dr. Nazneen Rajani, Research Lead, Hugging Face, California

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B2 L5 R5220

Are commercial APIs from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon for NLP tasks any better than rule-based systems? Is documentation for LLMs accessible to non-expert users in the industry? Our work on creating a unified toolkit for evaluation (robustness gym) and reporting (interactive model cards) attempts to address these questions.

Towards Richer Video Representation for Action Understanding

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B2 L5 R5209

With video data dominating the internet traffic, it is crucial to develop automated models that can analyze and understand what humans do in videos. Such models must solve tasks such as action classification, temporal activity localization, spatiotemporal action detection, and video captioning. This dissertation aims to identify the challenges hindering the progress in human action understanding and propose novel solutions to overcome these challenges.

Machine Learning for Biomedical Engineering: from Oncological Electroporation to Gesture Recognition

Luciano Tarricone, Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento

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B9 L2 H2

In this presentation an overview is given on the most important research activities performed at the EML2.

Machine-learning-assisted Quality of Transmission Estimation in Optical Networks

Andrea Bianco, Full Professor, Electronics and Telecommunications Department at Politecnico di Torino

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B9 L4 R4125

Machine Learning (ML) tools have recently been adopted for a wide range of automated operations in optical networking, moving fundamental steps towards the paradigm of zero-touch infrastructures. One example of such tasks is estimating the Quality of transmission of a lightpath prior to its establishment, which is particularly challenging due to the non-linear characteristics of signal propagation in optical fibers and to the often-incomplete knowledge of equipment parameters. This talk provides an overview of the contribution of my research team in the field of ML-based lightpath QoT estimation, including transfer learning approaches for inter-domain model adaptation, active learning for model building with small-sized training dataset, quantification of prediction uncertainty, and adoption of Explainable AI framework to expose the internal decisional mechanisms of trained models.

Machine Learning for Scalable MIMO Communication Systems: From Theory to Real-World Demonstration

Dr. Ahmed Alkhateeb, Electrical Engineering , Arizona State University

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B9 L2 H1

Large-scale MIMO communication (at sub-6GHz, mmWave, and sub-THz bands) is a key enabler for 5G, 6G, and beyond. Scaling MIMO systems, however, is subject to critical challenges, such as the large channel acquisition and beam training overhead and the sensitivity to channel estimation errors (especially at lower frequencies) and blockages (at higher frequencies). These challenges make it difficult for MIMO systems to support applications that have high mobility and strict reliability constraints. In this talk, I will first motivate the use of machine learning and sensory data to address these challenges. Then, I will present a few key machine-learning roles, enabling datasets, and recent hardware proof-of-concept prototypes that demonstrate the machine-learning gains in real-world environments.

Stochastic Numerics and Statistical Learning: Theory and Applications Workshop 2023

Stochastic Numerics PI Professor Raul Tempone (Chair) and Computational Probability PI Professor Ajay Jasra (Co-Chair)

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B9

Dear Kaustians, We are excited to announce the upcoming Stochastic Numerics and Statistical Learning: Theory and Applications Workshop 2023, taking place at KAUST, Building 9, from May 21 to June 1, 2023. Following the highly successful 2022 edition, this year's workshop promises to be another engaging and insightful event for researchers, faculty members, and students interested in stochastic algorithms, statistical learning, optimization, and approximation. The 2023 workshop aims to build on the achievements of last year's event, which featured 28 talks, two mini-courses, and two poster sessions, attracting over 150 participants from various universities and research institutes. In 2022, attendees had the opportunity to learn from through insightful talks, interactive mini-courses, and vibrant poster sessions. This year, the workshop will once again showcase contributions that offer mathematical foundations for algorithmic analysis or highlight relevant applications. Confirmed speakers include renowned experts from institutions such as Ecole Polytechnique, EPFL, Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris VI, and Imperial College London, among others.

Exploiting Data Sparsity in Matrix Algorithms for Adaptive Optics and Seismic Imaging

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B2 R5209;

This thesis addresses the exponential growth of experimental data and the resulting computational complexity seen in two major scientific applications, which account for most cycles consumed on today's supercomputers.

Physics-based Simulation in Visual Computing

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B9 L2 H2 H2

This talk covers a selection of previous and current work presenting a broad spectrum of research highlights ranging from simulating stiff phenomena such as the dynamics of fibers and textiles, over liquids containing magnetic particles, to the development of complex ecosystems and weather phenomena. Moreover, connection points to the growing field of machine learning are addressed and an outlook is provided with respect to selected technology transfer activities.

Universal light encoders: artificial intelligent optical hardware for real-time hyperspectral imaging and ultrasensitive detection

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B9 L2 H2

In this talk, I will review the fundamentals and application of this technology in various areas, ranging from the inverse design of ultra-flat optical components to HyplexTM, an innovative camera for acquiring and processing high-resolution hyperspectral videos in real-time at 30 frames per second.

Mitigating Bias in Predictions from Machine Learning Models

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B9 L2 H2 H2

The increasing popularity of machine learning models in real-world automated and decision support systems has underscored the need for assessing and then mitigating biases that may manifest, often spuriously, in their predictions either at the population, sub-population, or individual level. These biases can be assessed in terms of calibration, performance stratification, fairness metrics, prediction interval coverages, etc., and are mainly due to poor model specification (e.g., overparameterization without regularization or loss/likelihood mismatch) or data collection issues (e.g., population misrepresentation or unmeasured confounders).

Security and privacy in centralized and decentralized machine learning

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B4 L5 R5209

Machine learning (ML) is vulnerable to security and privacy attacks. Whereas security attacks aim at preventing model convergence or forcing convergence to wrong models, privacy attacks attempt to disclose the data used to train the model.

Adaptive Optimization Algorithms for Machine Learning

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B1 L4 R4214

Machine learning assumes a pivotal role in our data-driven world. The increasing scale of models and datasets necessitates quick and reliable algorithms for model training. This dissertation investigates adaptivity in machine learning optimizers.

FADO: A Federated Learning Attack and Defense Orchestrator

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B5 L5 R5209

Federated Learning (FL) is a distributed machine learning approach that allows multiple parties to train a model collaboratively without sharing sensitive data.

Efficient Machine Learning across Hardware, Software, and Algorithms

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B2 L5 R5209

Deep neural networks (DNNs) are revolutionizing computing, necessitating an integrated approach across the computing stack to optimize efficiency. In this talk, I will explore the frontier of DNN optimization, spanning algorithms, software, and hardware. We'll start with hardware-aware neural architecture search, demonstrating how tailoring DNN architectures to specific hardware can drastically enhance performance.

Thoughts About Machine Learning - Week 7

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B9 LH1 R2322

The seminars will be delivered in person by Jürgen Schmidhuber, Director of the KAUST AI Initiative, and will run weekly during the spring semester. The program will start with aspects of the theory of computation and delve into many topics not typically covered in a deep learning course. This is a truly unique opportunity to learn from one of the founders in artificial intelligence.

Thoughts About Machine Learning - Week 8

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B9 H1 R 2322

The AI Initiative, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division are delighted to announce the resumption of a series of seminars titled “Thoughts About Machine Learning". The seminars will be delivered in person by Jürgen Schmidhuber, Director of the KAUST AI Initiative, and will run weekly during the spring semester. The program will start with aspects of the theory of computation and delve into many topics not typically covered in a deep learning course. This is a truly unique opportunity to learn from one of the founders in artificial intelligence. Attendance is

Models, Methods, Applications: HPC in Medicine, Science, Engineering, and AI

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B3 L5 R5209

Abstract The accurate numerical prediction of complex processes in medicine, science, and engineering requires a well balanced interplay of mathematical models, numerical methods, and scientific software. In this talk, we discuss along different examples from engineering, earth-sciences, and medicine the various challenges in building predictive models. Our focus will be on the algorithmic aspects, i.e. on the numerical methods, -may it be finite elements or neural networks in the context of massive parallelism. We will present in particular parallel preconditioners for non-linear problems

Stochastic Numerics and Statistical Learning: Theory and Applications Workshop 2024

Stochastic Numerics PI Professor Raul Tempone (Chair) and Computational Probability PI Professor Ajay Jasra (Co-Chair)

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B2 B3 A0215

We are excited to announce the upcoming Stochastic Numerics and Statistical Learning: Theory and Applications Workshop 2024, taking place at KAUST, Auditorium 0215 b/w B4&5, from May 19-30, 2024. Following the highly successful last two years edition, this year's workshop promises to be another engaging and insightful event for researchers, faculty members, and students interested in stochastic algorithms, statistical learning, optimization, and approximation. The 2024 workshop aims to build on the achievements of last year's event, which featured 30 talks, two mini-courses, and two poster sessions, attracting over 150 participants from various universities and research institutes. In 2022 and 2023, attendees had the opportunity to learn from through insightful talks, interactive mini-courses, and vibrant poster sessions. This year, the workshop will once again showcase contributions that offer mathematical foundations for algorithmic analysis or highlight relevant applications. Confirmed speakers include renowned experts from institutions such as Ecole Polytechnique, EPFL, Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris VI, CUHK Shenzhen, and Imperial College London, among others.

Filling in the blanks of virtual cities

1 min read ·
New software generates three-dimensional models of buildings, with applications for disaster relief support.

CEMSE Big Data Open Day shows off fascinating discoveries

1 min read ·
The fifth-anniversary event marked CEMSE's biggest successes and featured 20 KAUST discoveries, with more than 1,000 visitors from the community attending the event."Big data has many applications: to understand medicine better; to manage food supplies, and to connect objects. Data is at the center of everything," said Dean Mootaz Elnozahy of the University's Computer, Electrical, Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) Division at the CEMSE Big Data Open Day held on December 4, 2016.

Professors discuss big data and human health in latest Sci-Café

1 min read ·
​Professors Takashi Gojobori, Xin Gao and Robert Hoehndorf spoke about big data and human health at the Sci-Café event held on February 27. Their talk, which was moderated by James Calvin, Vice President for Academic Affairs, aimed to answer the question, "Can Big Data Solve My Health Problems?" This event was open to all members of the KAUST community.

Building SANDS at KAUST

1 min read ·
​​​​​We live in a connected world where networked systems play an increasingly important role. These systems, which are the foundational pillars of our modern digital lives, are the result of some remarkable technological advancements and progress in computer science over the past three decades.

Student life: studying and working at the Computational Bioscience Research Center (KAUST)

1 min read ·
For Ph.D. students Arturo Magana Mora, Haitham Ashoor and Olaa Motwalli, April 2017 was a particularly nerve-wracking month. After years of hard work and sleepless nights, they finally defended their thesis, bringing them one step closer to graduation.

Cocoon finally out: Professor Marco Canini together with VMware, Samsung, and Microsoft craft the ultimate SDN ally

1 min read ·
With the recent emergence of software-defined networking, which brings programmability and lowers the barrier for new functionalities into networks, the academic and industry communities have become very interested in the problem of network verification.

Facebook AI new language explained by KAUST Professor Xiangliang Zhang

1 min read ·
That is not a Messenger troll, but the actual conversation between two chatbots by the Facebook AI Research (FAIR). The two robots, Bob and Alice, were thought the art of negotiation apples and books. They had been instructed to work out how to negotiate between themselves and improve their bartering as they went along. But, after leaving the pair alone, they start talking in this uncompressible but yet effective vocabulary.

Ph. D. Student Khalil Elkhalil nominated finalist for the Best Student Paper Award in the IEEE MLSP Conference

1 min read ·
Fast-placing Machine Learning (ML) is continuously in need of new algorithms, but testing their effectiveness is utterly time-consuming. "Asymptotic Performance Of Regularized Quadratic Discriminant Analysis Based Classifiers," a new paper presented by CEMSE Ph.D. Student Khalil Elkhalil puts ML on the fast gear and a finalist for the Best Student Paper Award in the IEEE MLSP Conference held last September in Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan.

Dominik L. Michels receives the first Procter & Gamble Faculty Award

1 min read ·
Dominik L. Michels, Computer Science and Mathematics faculty in the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering Division (CEMSE) and head of the Computational Sciences Group within the Visual Computing Center (VCC), recently received the first Procter & Gamble (P&G) Faculty Award.

Alumni Feature: Arturo Magana Mora

1 min read ·
CBRC Ph.D. graduate Arturo Magana Mora is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the prestigious National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tokyo, Japan.

Siqing Hou defends his Master’s thesis

1 min read ·
Siqing Hou, a Master's student under the supervision of Associate Professor Xin Gao, successfully defended his thesis.

Alumni Feature: Abdullah Khamis

1 min read ·
Abdullah Khamis has had quite an impressive career so far. After graduating with a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from KAUST under the supervision of Professor Vladimir Bajic and Associate Professor Xin Gao, he now works as the Director of Data Science in the Center for Strategic Studies (CSS) of the Royal Court of Saudi Arabia.

Meshari Alazami defends his thesis proposal

1 min read ·
Meshari Alazami, a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Associate Professor Xin Gao, successfully defended his thesis proposal on May 22, 2018. His topic, "Towards Rational Design of Biosynthesis Pathways", was well received by committee members Associate Professor Xin Gao, Distinguished Professor Takashi Gojobori and Assistant Professor Robert Hoehndorf.

Maxat Kulmanov defends his thesis proposal

1 min read ·
Maxat Kulmanov, a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Assistant Professor Robert Hoehndorf, defended his thesis proposal on July 31, 2018.

New Book "Extensions of Dynamic Programming for Combinatorial Optimization and Data Mining" of Professor Moshkov and His Former Students is Published by Springer

1 min read ·
A new book - "Extensions of Dynamic Programming for Combinatorial Optimization and Data Mining" by Hassan AbouEisha, Talha Amin, Igor Chikalov, Shahid Hussain, and Mikhail Moshkov - was recently published by Springer.

Alumni Focus: Ahmed Abdulmajeed Alabdulkarim, M.S. '11

1 min read ·
Ahmed Abdulmajeed Alabdulkarim earned a master's degree from KAUST in 2011. His research interests are in the field of big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and he is now pursuing his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S. He received his bachelor's degree with honors in computer science from King Saud University, where he graduated at the top of his class. From a young age, Alabdulkarim was passionate about computers. Studying computer science was his drive and motivation to continue his university studies. He explained that he chose KAUST for

KAUST partners with McLaren Racing on R&D

1 min read ·
McLaren Racing and KAUST signed a five-year research and development (R&D) agreement focused on extreme performance technology. The partnership aims to advance research in the areas of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), machine learning, fuels and lubricants, advanced mathematics and sensors and electronics. "This partnership underlines our commitment to supporting global STEM advancements," said Jonathan Neale, chief operations officer of McLaren Group. "KAUST is a leading research and education institution in these fields and mirrors our core values. McLaren Racing is part of a world

Mona Alshahrani defends her thesis proposal

1 min read ·
Mona Alshahrani, a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Assistant Professor Robert Hoehndorf, defended her thesis proposal on October 10, 2018.

Computing solutions for biological problems

1 min read ·
Xin Gao’s research is building bridges between computer science and biology.

Meshari Alazmi defends his Ph.D. thesis

1 min read ·
Meshari Alazmi, a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Associate Professor Xin Gao, defended his Ph.D. dissertation on October 24, 2018.

Sara Althubaiti defends her Master's thesis

1 min read ·
Sara Althubaiti, a student under the supervision of Assistant Professor Robert Hoehndorf, defended her Master's thesis on November 5, 2018.

Tweaking tools to track tweets over time

1 min read ·
Computer model learns to identify Twitter users’ evolving interests by analyzing their Tweets.

Student Focus: Adel Bibi

1 min read ·
KAUST Ph.D. student Adel Bibi, who works on bridging the gap between theory and practice in deep learning, believes we're living in a very exciting time.

Putting the sense in materials

1 min read ·
An interdisciplinary initiative is helping KAUST be at the forefront of a digital revolution, where sensors can find a use just about anywhere.

Accelerating the grapevine effect

1 min read ·
By looking at classical gossip algorithms from a novel perspective, KAUST Professor Peter Richtarik has found a way to significantly speed up gossip-based information sharing, and in the process, he discovered new applications for this efficient mathematical approach. Gossip involves the sharing of information between individuals in a network and can be applied mathematically in both human social networks and data networks, such as distributed sensors. “A network is a collection of nodes, each connected to other nodes via links,” explains Richtarik. “In social networks, for instance

KAUST Researchers Are the First to Generate Images of Realistic and Highly Detailed Texture Maps of Gigapixel in Size Using Deep Neural Networks

1 min read ·
KAUST researchers Anna Fruehstueck, Dr. Ibraheem Alhashim, and Prof. Peter Wonka have developed a novel technique to generate images of realistic and highly detailed texture maps using deep neural networks. The texture images synthesized by their system TileGAN can be of gigapixel size and are created by seamlessly merging smaller texture blocks into a single large image. The underlying neural networks are trained using high-resolution images such as detailed satellite imagery, maps and famous paintings.

Testing the blind spots in artificial intelligence

1 min read ·
Understanding the situations when artificial intelligence can fail is critical for application of future autonomous vehicles and medical diagnostics.

Database to support infectious disease research

1 min read ·
Linking disease pathogens to clinical signs and symptoms through a database could support research into the molecular mechanisms of infectious diseases.

KAUST Professor Peter Richtárik wins Distinguished Speaker Award

1 min read ·
Peter Richtárik, KAUST professor of computer science, recently received a Distinguished Speaker Award at the Sixth International Conference on Continuous Optimization (ICCOPT 2019) held in Berlin from August 3 to 8. ICCOPT 2019 was organized by the Mathematical Optimization Society and was hosted this year by the Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics.

Less chat leads to more work for machine learning

1 min read ·
Deep analysis of the way information is shared among parallel computations increases efficiency to accelerate machine learning at scale.

Machine learning models gather momentum

1 min read ·
New methods for training machine learning models are quicker and more accurate than current approaches, previously considered state-of-the-art.

LD Motif Finder locates ancient hidden protein patterns

1 min read ·
A machine learning method has identified highly elusive amino acid sequences involved in cell morphogenesis and adhesion and in diseases like cancer.

AI uses your imagination

1 min read ·
The psychology of human creativity helps artificial intelligence imagine the unseen.

Approximating a kernel of truth

1 min read ·
Machine learning tasks using very large data sets can be sped up significantly by estimating the kernel function that best describes the data.

Flattening the sentimental curve

1 min read ·
-By Meres J. Weche, KAUST News As municipal, regional and national governments have mandated longer and more restrictive isolation time periods to slow down the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and "flatten the curve," KAUST Associate Professor of Computer Science Xiangliang Zhang works on flattening the "emotional curve." Zhang's research focuses on developing reliable algorithms to analyze complex data sets through machine learning and artificial intelligence. Her research group specifically uses computer models to analyze social media posts on Twitter to study people's interests. When the

Peeling back the layers of deep machine learning

1 min read ·
A layer-based approach raises the efficiency of training artificial intelligence models.

Tracking the Curve: Analyzing the Emotional Response to COVID-19

1 min read ·
Hashtags like #covid19 and #coronavirus help us stay up to date on the developments of the new coronavirus pandemic. But beyond breaking news, tweets also offer a glimpse into the emotional side of the COVID-19 crisis.

Meet KAUST prospective student: Matheus Vinícius Medeiros de Souza

1 min read ·
Matheus Vinícius Medeiros de Souza is a 24-year-old electrical engineering graduate from the city of Natal, Brazil. Matheus first came to KAUST as a visiting student in 2019 and was instantly impressed by the university’s research facilities.

Meet KAUST Prospective Student: Xinge Yang

1 min read ·
Xinge Yang is a 22-year-old graduate who will join KAUST from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). Yang will join the University in the fall of 2020 as an M.S./Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Computational Imaging Group under the supervision of Professor Wolfgang Heidrich.

KAUST Prospective Student: Damilya Saduakhas

1 min read ·
Damilya Saduakhas, 21 years old, from Kazakhstan, obtained a B.Sc. degree in mathematics from the Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. Damilya has been selected as a young scientist to participate in the summer Data Lab from Yessenov Foundation and will join KAUST in the fall of 2020 as an M.S./Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Stochastic Processes and Applied Statistics Research group under the supervision of Professor David Bolin.

Meet KAUST Prospective Student: Igor Sokolov

1 min read ·
Igor Sokolov, 23, is an applied mathematics and physics graduate who will join KAUST from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia. Igor first came to KAUST as a visiting student in 2019 and was highly impressed by the University's living and working facilities. It was this first impression that prompted him to pursue an M.S. at KAUST. Sokolov will join KAUST in the Fall of 2020 as an M.S. candidate under the supervision of Professor Peter Richtarik.

KAUST prospective student: Xiaochuan Gou

1 min read ·
Xiaochuan Gou, 27, from Dalian, China, will join KAUST in the fall of 2020. He will join KAUST as a Ph.D. candidate and member of the Machine Intelligence and kNowledge Engineering research group under the supervision of Professor Xiangliang Zhang.

KAUST prospective student: Qizhou Wang

1 min read ·
Qizhou Wang, 22, is a communication engineering graduate who will join KAUST from the University of Electronic Science and Technology, China. Wang will join KAUST in the fall of 2020 as a M.S./Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Primalight Lab under the supervision of Professor Andrea Fratalocchi.

Meet KAUST prospective student: Zhenwen Liang

1 min read ·
Zhenwen Liang, 22, is a computer science graduate from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), China. Zhenwen will join KAUST in the fall of 2020 as a M.S./Ph.D. candidate and member of the Machine Intelligence and kNowledge Engineering research group under the supervision of Professor Xiangliang Zhang.

Meet KAUST prospective student: Pratik Nag

1 min read ·
Pratik Nag will join KAUST this fall as a Ph.D. candidate and member of the KAUST Environmental Statistics research group under the supervision of Professor Ying Sun. Pratik holds a master's degree in statistical quality control and operation research, and a bachelor's degree in statistics, from the Indian Statistical Institute and the University of Calcutta, India.

Computers excel in chemistry class

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Machine learning models can rapidly and accurately estimate key chemical parameters related to molecular reactivity.

Meet KAUST prospective student: Kai Yi

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Kai Yi is a graduate from Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU), China, who will join KAUST in the fall of 2020. Kai will join KAUST as a M.S./Ph.D. candidate and member of the KAUST Computer Vision, Content AI research group under the supervision of Professor Mohamed Elhoseiny. KAUST's high reputation and Kai's interest in computer vision and machine learning prompted him to choose the University to further his academic career.

Meet KAUST prospective student: Sahar Ammar

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Sahar Ammar will join KAUST this fall as a M.S./Ph.D. candidate and member of the Networking Research Lab and Communication Theory Lab under the co-supervision of Professor Basem Shihada and Professor Mohamed-Slim Alouini. The multidisciplinary engineering graduate will join the University from Tunisia Polytechnic School (TPS).

Meet KAUST student: Konstantin Burlachenko

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Konstantin Burlachenko holds a master’s degree in computer science from Bauman Moscow State Technical University (BMSTU), Russia. After graduating from BMSTU, he worked in several prominent Moscow companies, such as Huawei, NVIDIA, and Yandex. He joined KAUST in August 2020 as a Ph.D. candidate and member of Professor Peter Richtarik's Optimization and Machine Learning Lab.

Meet KAUST prospective student: Reem Alghamdi

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Reem Alghamdi is a computer science graduate from Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Saudi Arabia. Reem will join KAUST this fall as a M.S. candidate under the supervision of Professor Peter Richtarik.

Meet KAUST prospective student: Waleed Abu Laban

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Waleed Abu Laban is an electrical engineering graduate who will join KAUST this fall as a M.S./Ph.D. candidate and member of the KAUST Communication and Computing Systems Lab under the supervision of Professor Ahmed Eltawil.

Meet KAUST student: Grigory Malinovsky

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Grigory Malinovsky joined KAUST this fall as a M.S./Ph.D. candidate and member of Professor Peter Richtarik's Optimization and Machine Learning Lab. Grigory holds a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics and physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia. Malinovsky first came to KAUST as a visiting student and was instantly impressed by the research facilities and working atmosphere. His outstanding internship experience was a catalyst in choosing KAUST as the next step in his academic career.

KAUST Environmental Statistics group publishes book exploring multivariate statistical analysis

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The KAUST Environmental Statistic (ES) research group has recently published a book titled "Statistical Process Monitoring Using Advanced Data-Driven and Deep Learning Approaches." The book is the outcome of the Core Research Grant (GRG) project led by KAUST Professor Ying Sun, Associate Professor of Statistics.

Deep learning in the emergency department

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Harnessing the power of deep learning leads to better predictions of patient admissions and flow in emergency departments.

Professor Ghanem wins 2020 Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Arab Researchers

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Bernard Ghanem, KAUST associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science, recently received the 2020 Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Arab Researchers for ''Machine Learning and Big Data.''

Machine Learning Arabic NLP webinar

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Join us to learn, compete, and win at the Machine Learning Webinar and learn more about participating in the Arabic NLP challenge! Register Now!

Talented KAUST Ph.D. student aims to revolutionize healthcare with machine learning

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KAUST Ph.D. student, Yu Li, is a talented young computer scientist with an interest in developing novel computational methods and algorithms to solve and understand the principles behind the “bio-world.”

Broadening horizons for people with quadriplegia

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An assistive technology uses magnetic skin to support freedom of movement for people with quadriplegia.

Xin Gao promoted to rank of professor

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Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) would like to congratulate Xin Gao for being promoted to the rank of Professor, effective January 1, 2021. Prof. Gao joined KAUST in October 2010 and became a CBRC PI in January 2013. He has since then produced tremendous work in the areas of computational biology, bioinformatics, machine learning, and algorithms. Dr. Xin Gao is also the Acting Associate Director of the Computational Bioscience Research Center and the lead of the Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at KAUST. Prior to joining KAUST, he was a Lane Fellow at Lane Center

Brain-on-a-chip would need little training

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A neural network that mimics the biology of the brain can be loaded onto a microchip for faster and more efficient artificial intelligence.

Machine learning at speed

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Optimizing network communication accelerates training in large-scale machine-learning models.

Training an AI eye on the Moon

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Machine learning accelerates the search for promising Moon sites for energy and mineral resources.

CBRC congratulates Aryam Alotaibi a SRSI student on winning the top paper Award

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Aryam Alotaibi a SRSI student at CBRC wins the top paper Award titled "Computational method to predict drug-disease associations using machine learning and graph embedding."

Drop the zeros for a performance boost

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An eight-fold speed up of deep machine learning can be achieved by skipping the transmission of zero values.

KAUST paper wins 2020 Computational Optimization and Applications Best Paper Award

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KAUST Professor of Computer Science Peter Richtárik and his former student Nicolas Loizou, currently a postdoctoral researcher at Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute and soon to take up an assistant professorship position at Johns Hopkins University, recently received the 2020 Computational Optimization and Applications (COAP) Best Paper Award.

Deeper defense against cyber attacks

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To address the growing threat of cyberattacks on industrial control systems, a KAUST team including Fouzi Harrou, Wu Wang and led by Ying Sun has developed an improved method for detecting malicious intrusions.

Professor Eltawil officially inducted as a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors

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Earlier this year, KAUST Professor of Electrical Engineering Ahmed Eltawil was elected as a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Eltawil was officially inducted as a Senior Member at the recent NAI 10th Annual Meeting held in Florida, U.S.

Dominik L. Michels appointed Associate Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics

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KAUST faculty member Dominik L. Michels has recently been promoted to associate professor of computer science and applied mathematics.

Can machine learning help predict disease spread?

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Machine learning techniques can provide accurate forecasting of the spread of viruses during pandemics. Under the supervision of Ying Sun and Fouzi Harrou, Yasminah Alali developed an approach that removes human bias and assumptions, predicting pandemic evolution more accurately.

MS Thesis Defense: Rare variant collapsing analysis on UK Biobank by Yang Liu

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Yang Liu, M.S./Ph.D. candidate in the Bio-Ontology research group under the supervision of Professor Robert Hoehndorf successfully defended her thesis "Rare variant collapsing analysis on UK Biobank".

MS Thesis Defense: Description Logic EL++Embeddings with Intersectional Closure by Xi Peng

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Xi Peng MS Student under the supervision of Professor Robert Hoehndorf successfully defended his thesis "Description Logic EL++Embeddings with Intersectional Closure"

Computer learns to write captions with feeling

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Mohamed Elhoseiny and his PhD student Youssef Mohamed are teaching AI to capture the full spectrum of human emotions when annotating artwork in order to reduce emotional bias in computer-generated captions.

AI helps diagnose post-COVID lung problems

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A new AI diagnostic tool developed by KAUST scientists allows doctors to visualize lung damage caused by COVID-19 in more detail.

KAUST alumnus named in Forbes' “30 Under 30 Asia list” – Class of 2022

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KAUST alumnus Yu Li (Ph.D. '20) was recently named amongst the Forbes' "30 Under 30 Asia list" – Class of 2022. Forbes recognized the current assistant professor of computer science and engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) for his work developing algorithms to solve problems in biology and health care.

Extreme analysis of seizures

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CEMSE researchers Matheus Guerrero, Raphaël Huser and Hernando Ombao developed a new approach for analyzing seizures in epilepsy patients by applying extreme value theory to real EEG seizure data.

Steering Customized AI Architectures for HPC Scientific Workloads: A Bird of Feather at SC22!

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Abstract: We explore the possibilities of a hybrid system capable of solving both HPC and AI scientific problems. Such a hybrid architecture combines the synergism between classical HPC platforms and dedicated AI chip systems, which is important due to the computational challenges brought to the fore by massively parallel Exascale systems. We discuss the system functionality, the algorithmic software adaptations, and performance considerations. We present efforts in supporting AI/ML applications in addition to seismic imaging, climate/weather prediction, and computational astronomy on hybrid

BORG team win at the KAUST-NVIDIA GPU Hackathon 2022

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Congratulations to Senay Kafkas, Maxat Kulmanov and Fernando Zhapa Camacho of the Bio-Ontology Research Group (BORG) on winning at the KAUST-NVIDIA GPU Hackathon 2022. The 8th edition of the Hackathon on Accelerating Scientific Applications using Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) was held at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), twelve teams of students and researchers enjoyed the opportunity to accelerate their codes in GPU’s under the guidance of expert mentors of NVIDIA, Codee, KAUST Supercomputing Lab (KSL) and KAUST core labs.

Giving voice to the voiceless through assistive technology

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Artificial skin coupled with sensors and machine learning technology allows people with voice disorders to communicate using soundless mouth movements.

Zhize Li

Research Scientist, Computer Science
Zhize Li is a Research Scientist working with Professor Peter Richtarik in his research group at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Zhize Li received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences of Tsinghua University in 2019 under the supervision of Prof. Jian Li. On the career side, before joining KAUST, he was a visiting scholar at the Computer Science Department of Duke University (Hosted by Prof. Rong Ge) and a visiting scholar at the Industrial and

Zhuo Yang

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Zhuo Yang is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science program at Machine Intelligence and kNowledge Engineering (MINE) Laboratory under the supervision of Professor Xiangliang Zhang at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interests Zhuo's research interests include machine learning and data mining. Education Profile ​B. E., Computer Science, Nankai University, China, 2014. M. E., Computer Science, Nankai University, China, ​2017.

CEMSE New Faculty: Professor Rolf Krause

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Professor Rolf Krause, our new faculty member at KAUST, drives sustainable progress across various domains, from medicine to geology, with his pioneering research in applied mathematics and efficient algorithms.

Zhenwen Liang

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Zhenwen Liang is a M.S./Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Machine Intelligence and kNowledge Engineering research group under the supervision of Professor Xiangliang Zhang. Before joining KAUST, Zhenwen obtained a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), China. Research Interests Zhenwen's research interests include AI research and machine learning.

Zihang Xiang

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Zihang Xiang is a Ph.D. student at ‌Privacy-Awareness, Responsibility and Trustworthy Laboratory under the supervision of Professor Di Wang at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Publications Z. Xiang, M. M. Khan, U. Khalid and J. Xu, ”A DC link capacitors’ voltage balancing method in unidirectional cascaded H-bridge converter using multi-limb-core (MLC) transformers,” 2017 China International Electrical and Energy Conference (CIEEC),Beijing, 2017, pp. 606-611. U. Khalid, M. M. Khan, Z. Xiang and Y. Jianyang, ”Bidirectional modular Dual Active Bridge (DAB) converter

Yuxi Hong

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Yuxi Hong is a PhD student working with Professor David Keyes. He is working on accelerating the training process of deep learning from different aspects. Why KAUST? KAUST is a great place for research. Why HPC and machine learning? I believe we need more computation in the future. Scalable and efficient computing methods are basic tools for the scientific research. Education Profile MS Tsinghua University. BS Tsinghua University.

Zainab A. Homoud

M.S. Student, Bioengineering
Research Interest Studying : Brain time series, fMRI, EEG, Signal Processing and Machine Learning for better Mental Disease Diagnosis and Consciousness Study. Previous Education Undergraduate study (B.S) in Biomedical Engineering and Health Science at the Joint program of North Carolina State University and UNC Chapel Hill.

Youssef S. Mohamed

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Education Youssef Mohamed is a Computer Science Ph.D. candidate at the Visual Computing Center (VCC)/Vison-CAIR at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Mohamed Elhoseiny Bachelor's Degree in Communication and Information Engineering, University of Science and Technology in Zewail City, Cairo, Egypt (2013-2018) Master's Degree in Computer Science, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia (2019-2022) Research Interests I am interested in developing AI that is aware of the Emotional and Cultural aspects of human intelligence. We study human

Yuchen Li

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Yuchen Li is a PhD Student under the supervision of Professor Mohamed Elhoseiny in Vision-CAIR Group at Visual Computing Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Before joining KAUST, Yuchen was a research intern at iFLYTEK, an intelligent speech and artificial intelligence company in Hefei, China, for three months. He was a Rocket MQ open source contributor and Alibaba summer of code student developer with rich research and engineering experience. He visited NUS, UBC, THU, and other prestigious universities for academic exchanges with a

Yulian Wu

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Yulian Wu is a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Professor Francesco Orabona at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Publications Youming Tao*, Yulian Wu*, Peng Zhao and Di Wang. "Optimal Rates of (Locally) Differentially Private Heavy-tailed Multi-Armed Bandits." https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.02575. (Equal contributions) Education Profile M.S. in Statistics, East China Normal University, China B.S. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, East China Normal University, China

Yibo Yang

Research Scientist
Yibo Yang is a research scientist at the Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem. Before joining KAUST, he obtained his Ph.D. from Peking University in 2021. He worked as a researcher at JD Explore Academy, JD.com, in 2021-2023.

Yipeng Qin

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Computer Science
Yipeng Qin was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with Professor Peter Wonka at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Currently, he is a Lecturer at the School of Computer Science and Informatics in Cardiff University (CU), United Kingdom. Education and Early Career In 2013, Yipeng Qin graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronic Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. Later during 2017, he obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth University in

Yu Li

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Research Interests Yu Li is a Ph.D. student at KAUST, majoring in Computer Science. His advisor is Prof. Xin Gao. His research interests are Deep Learning, Machine Learning, and Bioinformatics. He got his Master degree in Computer Science at KAUST in December 2016. Before that, he got his Bachelor degree in Biosciences at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). Scientific and Professional Membership Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence(AAAI) Member International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Member Education Profile Ph.D student, Computer

Yazeed Alharbi

Yazeed Alharbi is a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Prof. Peter Wonka at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career In 2015, Yazeed obtained his bachelor degree from Purdue University in the computer graphics and visualization track, with a minor in philosophy. In 2018, he received his master degree from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He mainly learned about computer vision and the process of publication in that field. Research Interest Currently, Alharbi research is focused

Yang Liu

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Yang Liu is an M.S./Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Bio-Ontology research group under the supervision of Professor Robert Hoehndorf. Before joining KAUST. Research Interests Yang's interests include bioinformatics, machine learning and human genomics. She is interested in building models for human disease diagnosis and prognosis, especially for cancer, and applying statistical methods to analyze human omics data. Education Profile B.Sc, Bioengineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, 2016-2020. M.Sc, Bioengineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi

Yahya Bokhari

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Computer Science
Yahya Bokhari is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), working with Professor Wolfgang Heidrich on enhancing X-ray images under Smart Health Initiative. Education and Early Career Yahya Bokhari received his bachelor's degree in Medical Technology from King Abdulaziz University, KSA. He holds a Master's degree in Bioinformatics and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Virginia Commonwealth University, USA. Research Interest Dr. Yahya Bokhari is mainly interested in Image Processing, Computer Vision

Xun Qian

Xun Qian is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Visual Computing Center (VCC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), working with Professor Peter Richtárik in his research group. Education and Early Career Dr. Qian obtained his B.Sc. degree in Mathematics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 2013. In 2017, he has obtained a Ph.D. degree in Mathematics from Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), Hong Kong. Research Interest Xun Qian is interested in stochastic methods and algorithms, machine learning and interior-point methods. Selected

Xiangyu Cui

Xiangyu Cui is a Master student at Communication Theory Laboratory(CTL), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), working with Professor. Mohamed-Slim Alouini in CTL. Education and Early Career Xiangyu Cui studied Communication Engineering and got his Bachelor of Engineering from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in 2023. Honors and Awards Xiangyu Cui was awarded National scholarship in China in both 2020 and 2021. Education Profile B.S. in Communication Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China (September

Xin Gao

Program Chair, Computer Science
Professor Gao is a world-leading expert in developing novel AI solutions for challenges in biology, biomedicine, and health and wellness, with a focus on AI-based drug development, large language models in biomedicine, biomedical imaging analysis, and omics-based disease detection and diagnostics.

Xiaochuan Gou

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Xiaochuan Gou is a Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Machine Intelligence and kNowledge Engineering research group (MINE) under the supervision of Professor Xiangliang Zhang. Before joining KAUST, Xiaochuan obtained his master’s degree in Computer Science from National Chiao Tung University and a bachelor’s degree in Spatial Information and Digital Technology from Wuhan University, China, respectively. Research Interests Xiaochuan's research interests include machine learning, data mining, and GIS. He aspires to build new machine learning models to resolve existing problems in public traffic

Xi Peng

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Xi Peng likes pop music and doing sports. He graduated from SUSTech in 2021 and planning to continue his academic career at KAUST under the supervision of Professor Robert Hoehndorf. "He says KAUST has the best environment to do research. Life in KAUST is also comfortable. I believe I can achieve a lot in KAUST". Research Interest applications of machine learning and logic integration in biology Education Profile B.Sc, Computer Science, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China, 2017-2021 M.Sc, Computer Science, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal

Waqas Waseem Ahmed

Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate in Photonics Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain), Universita degli Studi di Firenze (Italy), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), Université Paul Cèzanne Aix Marseille III (France).(2018) MS in Electrical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Saudi Arabia. (2014) BS in Electronic Engineering, Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (GIKI), Pakistan. (2009) Research Interests Non-Hermitian Photonics, Nonlinear Optics, Machine Learning, Laser Physics.

Waleed Abu Laban

Waleed Abu Laban is a M.S./Ph.D. candidate at the KAUST Communication and Computing Systems Lab under the supervision of Professor Ahmed Eltawil. Before joining KAUST, Waleed obtained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from The University of Jordan. Research Interests Waleed's research interests include signal processing and machine learning.

Trisevgeni Rapakoulia

Trisevgeni Rapakoulia obtained her Ph.D. degree (2016-2019) in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao at structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interests Trisevgeni's research interests include bioinformatics, System Biology, Prediction of harmful SNPs, Genome-Wide Association Studies and Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning Approaches, Evolutionary Algorithms, Feature Selection Techniques. Research field: study the effects of drugs and drug combinations in the transcriptome level

Vasiliki Kordopati

Vasiliki Kordopati obtained Master degree in Computer Science under the co-supervision of Professor Boon Ooi at Photonics Laboratory and Prof. Xin Gao at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Vasiliki is a co-founder of Oæsis, a King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) startup spinout, where she is responsible for product development. A computer engineer by training, she received a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece. Research Interest Vasiliki's

Uchenna Akujuobi

Uchenna Akujuobi obtained his Ph.D. degree in computer science under the supervision of Prof. Xiangliang Zhang leading the MINE group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research interests Uchenna's research interests included Machine learning, data mining, Social Networks, Graph mining, Information Retrieval, Text Mining, Big Data, and Deep Networks. Ph.D. dissertation entitled “Learning from Scholarly Attributed Graphs for Scientific Discovery”​. First employment: Research Scientist, Sony AI​, Tokyo, Japan. He is also the creator of Delve, a dataset retrieval, and

Ussama Zahid

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Ussama Zahid is a PhD student in the Accelerated Connected Computing Lab at KAUST. He works at the intersection of deep learning and embedded systems, i.e., “Edge AI”. He specializes in efficient training and inference of quantized deep neural networks (DNNs) and hardware-software co-design of DNN accelerators. Before joining KAUST, he was as a research engineer intern at Xilinx Research Labs, Dublin Ireland, Ireland where he worked on quantized and robust training of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), resulting in patents and publications. He received his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering

Tarek H. Mahmoud

Areas of Expertise and Research Interests ​Computer Vision Machine Learning Robotics Education Profile ​MS in Electrical Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia (2017) ​​BS in Electrical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Saudi Arabia (2016)

Tilman Hinnerichs

Visiting Student, Bio-Ontology Research Group
Tilman Hinnerichs was a visiting student at Professor Robert Hoehndorf's Bio-Ontology Research Group (BORG) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. Research Interests Tilman's research interests included ​Machine Learning, Bioinformatics, Ontologies, Reasoning, Logic, Particle Methods. He was particularly interested in the application of machine-learning algorithms to problems of the bioscience field. Education Profile ​Since 2016: Diploma Student, Computer Science, TU Dresden​. 2015-2016: Student, Human Medicine, Charité Berlin.

Talha Ariff

Talha is studying the use of novel fibre-optic distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) as a tool to help monitor and control anthropogenic acoustic pollution in marine environments.

Su Wang

Su Wang obtained a master's degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Xiangliang Zhang at Machine Intelligence and kNowledge Engineering (MINE) Laboratory in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). First employment: Didi Chuxing​, Beijing, China, 2016. Research Interests Su's research interests included ​Data mining and machine learning. Education Profile ​​B.Sc., Information Science & Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, 2014. M.Sc., Computer Science, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Awards and Distinctions First Prize

Somayah Albaradei

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Somayah Albaradei is a Ph.D. student at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). ​Somayah obtained her master's degree in computer science from the University of Manitoba, Canada in 2014. Professional Profile 2014: Lecturer at College of Computing and Information Technology-King Abdulaziz University - Jeddah - Saudi Arabia 2010- 2011: Teacher Assistant at College of Computing and Information Technology-King Abdulaziz University - Jeddah - Saudi Arabia 2009-2010: Collaborator

Siqing Hou

Siqing Hou obtained his Master's degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Master Thesis, 2018: Neural Inductive Matrix Completion for Predicting Disease-Gene Associations Research Interests Siqing Hou was working in the fields of Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Machine Learning. Professional Profile Research Student, University of Birmingham, Jul 2015 - Aug 2018 Software Effort Estimation, Machine Learning Education Profile M.Sc. Computer

Slavomir Hanzely

Slavomir Hanzely is an MS/Ph.D. student in the Applied Mathematics and Computational Science Program under the supervision of Professor Peter Richtarik at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Slavomir earned his Bachelor's Degree in Informatics with a background in both Mathematics and Computer Science from the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics University (FMPH UK), Slovakia in 2019. Research Interest He is interested in Machine Learning, Federated Learning, and Stochastic Algorithms. Education

Souhaib Ben Taieb

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Statistics
Dr. Souhaib Ben Taieb is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at University of Mons (UMONS) in Belgium. He is also an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. From 2016 to 2018, Souhaib was a Lecturer in the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. In 2015, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Spatio-Temporal and Data Science Group at KAUST. He was a visiting scholar at several international institutions, including the School of Earth

Shichao Pei

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Shichao Pei is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science program at Machine Intelligence and kNowledge Engineering (MINE) Laboratory under the supervision of Professor Xiangliang Zhang at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interests Shichao Pei research interests include machine learning and data mining. Education Profile ​B. E., Software Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University​, 2016.

Shahid Hussain

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Research Interests Design and analysis of decision trees based on dynamic programming and greedy approaches Machine learning Discrete optimization Selected Publications Azad, M., Chikalov, I., Hussain, S., and Moshkov, M. Restricted multi-pruning of decision trees, In Machine Learning and Data Analytics Symposium as plenary talk (2016) (Awarded best paper). Busbait, M., Chikalov, I., Hussain, S., and Moshkov, M. Diagnosis of constant faults in read-once contact networks over finite bases. Discrete Applied Mathematics, 184 (2015), pp. 76–88. AbouEisha, H., Hussain, S., Lozin, V., Monnot, J

Shariq Farooq Bhat

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Shariq Farooq Bhat is an MS/PhD student under the supervision of Professor Peter Wonka at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Shariq Farooq Bhat obtained his bachelor of technology degree in Electronics & Communication Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Srinagar, India in 2018. During bachelor’s degree, he was an intern at Texas Instruments (TI) Center for Embedded Product Design at NSIT in New Delhi. Then, in 2016, he worked at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) as a computer vision and deep learning research Intern and

Sheng Wang

Sheng Wang worked as a Research Scientist at Prof. Xin Gao's Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Sheng got his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2010. He was then a postdoc fellow at Toyota Technological Institute in Chicago during 2010 and 2014. During 2014 and 2017, he was a research professional at the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago. Since March 2017, he joined the SFB group as a research scientist. Currently, Sheng is a

Shahad Qathan

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Shahad Qathan is an MS candidate in the Bio-Ontology Research Group (BORG) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Robert Hoehndorf. Research Interests Artificial Intelligence, more specifically Machine Learning and its applications in healthcare and Bioinformatics Education Profile B.Sc, Computer Science, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 2020

Shasha Liu

Shasha Liu is a visit student in the Communication Theory Lab (CTL) under the supervision of Professor Mohamed-Slim Alouini at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Shasha Liu will obtain her bachelor degree in Information Countermeasure Technology from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in 2022. Scientific Interest Shasha Liu is interested in Machine Learning and Communicate Engineering. Education Profile B.S. in Information Countermeasure Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC)

Sara Althubaiti

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Sara Althubaiti is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Bio-Ontology Research Group (BORG) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Robert Hoehndorf. Prior to this, Sara received her master's degree in computer science with a focus on bioinformatics from KAUST in December 2018. Research Interests Sara's research interests include bioinformatics, text mining, ontologies, and cancer. Her research focuses on applying machine learning methods in cancer biology and development specifically in the field of finding driver genes and mutations in

Samuel Horváth

Ph.D. Student, Statistics
Samuel Horváth is a Ph.D. candidate at Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), studying under the supervision of Professor Peter Richtarik in his research group. Education and Early Career Samuel studied Financial Mathematics at Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia and obtained his bachelor in 2017. Then, he joined the MS/PhD program in Statistics and Optimization at KAUST in 2017. In 2018, he had an internship (Machine Learning Intern) at Exponea for 3 months. Research Interest His research interest include Optimization for Big Data

Salman Alsubaihi

Salman Alsubaihi was an Electrical and Computer Engineering Master Student in the Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Salman Alsubaihi obtained his bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Saudi Arabia in 2017. In 2019, he received his Master in Electrical Engineering from KAUST. Research Interests ​ Salman is focusing on understanding deep neural

Sakhaa Alsaedi

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
​Sakhaa Al-Saedi completed her bachelor's degree in Computer Science in 2016 at Taibah University. She is the founder of the Medvation startup company, inventing educational kits that teach children concepts of robotics and Machine Learning (ML) in fun ways. She worked as a product developer at the Namma Al-Munawara company, Madinah, before starting her master's degree at KAUST in 2017. She is currently working with the Bio-Ontology Research Group (BORG) of Professor Robert Hoehndorf on human genome sequencing to evaluate the impact of Saudi-specific allele frequencies on variant calling

Sameh Abdulah

Dr. Sameh Abdulah is a Research Scientist at the Extreme Computing Research Center. Why KAUST? Finding a university that believes in multi-disciplinary is challenging. KAUST multi-disciplinary vision aims to fill the gaps between different research fields to serve the human needs and consolidate the understanding of this mysterious world. Each country should have its KAUST to change the common vision of research around the world. Why HPC? High-performance Computing (HPC) is a way to move science from a limited scale to non-expected scale. Scalability means more analysis, understanding, and

Rolf Krause

Professor Rolf Krause is an experienced researcher and educator specializing in designing and analyzing algorithms to solve complex problems in scientific computing and machine learning.

Ricardo Henao

Associate Professor (former), Bioengineering
​Ricardo Henao, a quantitative scientist, is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering in the Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering ( BESE) Division, and Computer Science in the Computer, Electrical, Mathematical Sciences and Engineering Division ( CEMSE), member of the Smart Health Initiative ( SHI) and the Computational Biosciences Research center ( CBRC), at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology). He is also currently an Associate Professor in the department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering ( ECE)

Renmin Han

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Structural and Functional Bioinformatics
Renmin Han is a Research Scientist at the Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) of Professor Xin Gao at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). ​Renmin obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. Research Interests ​Renmin is interested in the development of computer science. Currently, he is working on imaging processing in electron micrography, especially for the reconstruction of biological ultrastructures. His work is to use computational methods to improve the boundary of

Ramzan Umarov

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Ramzan is a PhD candidate, working on solving biological problems by using applied machine learning with focus on deep learning. He has developed deep learning based methods to solve bioinformatics problems achieving state-of-the-art performance, focusing on various aspects of gene regulation. Umarov obtained his Master degree from Imperial College London, Advanced Computing course. Research Interests The main research interest of Ramzan Umarov is applied machine learning especially Deep Learning. Professional Profile 2011-2012, Programmer, Softberry, Mount Kisko, NY, USA 2013-2014, Programmer

Rawan Olayan

Rawan Olayan obtained both, her MS Degree and PhD Degree from Computer Science at KAUST in 2013 and 2018 respectively. Her master thesis and PhD thesis supervisor was Vladimir Bajic. Under the supervision of her advisor Professor Vladimir Bajic, she completed her thesis on developing novel computational methods to predict drug-target interactions and their functional effects using data integration, graph mining and machine learning approaches. Currently, Rawan is working as a postdoctoral associate in the Carter Lab at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine in Farmington, Connecticut. In

Rahaf Shiqdar

Visiting Student, Bio-Ontology Research Group
Rahaf Shiqdar was a visiting student from ​Umm Al-Qura University ​at Professor Robert Hoehndorf's Bio-Ontology Research Group (BORG) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interests Rahaf's research interests included ​Bioinformatics, Machine and Deep learning.

Raphaël Huser

Associate Professor, Statistics
Professor Huser develops novel statistical methodology and machine learning solutions to model and predict extreme events in various applications ranging from climate and earth sciences to finance and neuroscience.

Raphael Bridi

Ph.D. Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering ,King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Rameen Abdal

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Rameen Abdal is a Master student under the supervision of Professor Peter Wonka at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He has graduated in 2023. Education and Early Career Rameen Abdal obtained his bachelor of technology degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the National Institute of Technology in Srinagar, India in 2018. After that, he joined KAUST for the MS/PhD program in computer science to continue his studies. Before joining KAUST, Rameen was an intern at Texas Instruments (TI) Center for Embedded Product Design at Netaji Subhas University of

Peter Wonka

Professor, Computer Science
Professor Peter Wonka is a computer scientist with a research focus in computer vision, computer graphics, remote sensing, and machine learning.

Qizhou Wang

Qizhou Wang is an M.S./Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Primalight research group under the supervision of Professor Andrea Fratalocchi. Before joining KAUST, Qizhou obtained a bachelor's degree in communication engineering from the University of Electronic Science and Technology, China. Research Interests Qizhou's research interests include machine learning, optimization theories and computer vision.

Pratik Nag

Ph.D. Student, Statistics
Pratik Nag is a Ph.D. candidate at the KAUST Environmental Statistics research group under the supervision of Professor Ying Sun. Before joining KAUST, Pratik obtained a master's degree in statistical quality control and operation research from the Indian Statistical Institute, India. Research Interests Pratik's research interests focus on machine learning, artificial intelligence and statistical techniques to solve problems related to spatio-temporal processes. Education Profile Master's degree in Statistical Quality Control and operation research, Indian Statistical Institute, India

Qiannan Zhang

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Qiannan Zhang is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science program at Machine Intelligence and Knowledge Engineering (MINE) Laboratory under the supervision of Professor Xiangliang Zhang at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). ​​​​​Research interests Qiannan's research interests include Machine learning and data mining​. Education Profile B. E., Communication Engineering, Tianjin University, China, 2010-2014. M. E., Communication Engineering, Tianjin University, China, 2014-2017. Research Intern, KAUST, 2017.

Peter Richtarik

Professor, Computer Science
Professor Richtárik specializes in big data optimization and machine learning. He is known for his work on randomized coordinate descent algorithms, stochastic gradient descent and federated learning.

Peihao Zhu

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Peihao Zhu is a Computer Science Ph.D. candidate at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Peter Wonka in his research group. He has completed his Ph.D and graduated in 2023. Education and Early Career Peihao Zhu obtained his bachelor of engineering in Automation from Northeastern University in China in 2016. After that, he continued his studies in Computer Science and received his master's degree from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia in 2019. Research Interest

Peng Yang

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Structural and Functional Bioinformatics
Peng Yang worked as a Postdoctoral research fellow at Prof. Xin Gao's Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) during 2016-2018. Currently, Peng is a research scientist at Baidu Research. Research Interests ​Machine Learning and Data Mining problem, especially online active learning, multi-task learning, recommender systems, and deep learning. Algorithms for bioinformatics problems, especially in disease gene prediction, drug-target interaction prediction, protein complex, and microbial community pattern detection

Peihao Li

Peihao Li is a Ph.D student in Electrical Engineering department within CEMSE division. He got a B.S in Observation, Navigation and Control from Northwestern Polytechnical University, China. He received master degree in the Ms/PhD program in Electrical Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in winter 2017. His research interests include UAV navigating, image processing and robust control. Currently, he is working on developing algorithms and applications in signal processing and is especially interested in semi-classical signal analysis (SCSA). Research

Olaa A. Motwalli

Research Interests Olaa Motwalli is a Ph.D. student in Computational Science and a member of the Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) at KAUST. She obtained her Bachelor's degree in Computer Science at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah and obtained her Master's degree in Computer and Software Engineering at Widener University in the USA. Her research interests are mainly the development and computational support for the design of sustainable biofuel production via microbial cell factories through machine learning, graph mining, and algorithm development, genome-scale metabolic

Omar Mena Facio

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Omer Mena Facio is a Master student in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Ivan Viola at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Omer Mena Facio

Olga Mashkova

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
PhD student in Computer Science. Research interests: machine learning, bioinformatics, mathematics, knowledge representation and reasoning, deep learning, algorithms.

Noor Bafageeh

Noor Bafageeh was a Master student in Computer Science Program under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem at Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah university of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Career Noor earned her bachelor degree in Computer Science from Effat University in Jeddah in 2016. She joined KAUST and received her master degree in Computer Science in 2018. Research Interest She is interested in computer vision, machine learning, Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) and deep learning. Education Profile M.S., Computer Science, King Abdullah University of

Ngan Nguyen

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Ngan Nguyen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Program under the supervision of Professor Ivan Viola in the Nanovisualization Research Group at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Ngan has a Master's Degree in Computer Science. She worked at Gameloft Company as a Developer. After that, she joined the University of Information Technology, Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City as a Lecturer. Research Interest Ngan is focusing on Computer Graphics, Visualization, and their overlaps into

Norah S. Alballa

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Education Profile Ph.D. in Computer Science, CEMSE, KAUST, 2022-present M.S. in Computer Science, Portland State University, 2016 B.S. in Information Technology, King Saud University (KSU), 2010

Mohammed Hussain AlSharif

Ph.D. Student (former), Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ph.D. Degree, Electrical and Computer Engineering ,King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, KAUST,
Mostafa Emara

Mostafa Mohamed Lotfy Emara

Postdoctoral Research Fellow (former), Electrical and Computer Engineering
PhD Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology)

Mudassir Masood

Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). ,Assistant Professor, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Motasem Alfarra

Motasem Alfarra is an Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. student in Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) Group in Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem.

Mona Alshahrani

Mona Alshahrani obtained her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Robert Hoehndorf at the Bio-Ontology Research Group (BORG) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interests Machine Learning, human bioinformatics, data integration. The combination of neuro-symbolic methods over ontologies and semantic RDF graphs with statistical methods. Their applications in data analysis and features representations in several biomedical applications such as phenotypes prediction, drug repurposing, and others. I'm also interested in network

Mohammed Aldosari

Ph.D. Student, Mechanical Engineering
Education 2021.08 - Present Ph.D. Student in Mechanical Engineering, KAUST, KSA 2018.08 - 2020.06 M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, KAUST, KSA 2011.08 - 2016.05 B.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering, KFUPM, KSA Professional Profile 2022.01 - 2022.05 Teaching Assistant, CEMSE, KAUST, KSA 2017.07 - Present Researcher, Center of Excellence for Aeronautics & Astronautics, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, KSA 2017.04 - 2017.07 Maintenance Planning Engineer, SaudiGulf Airlines, KSA Selected Publications M.N.Aldosari, K.K.Yalamanchi, X. Gao, S.M. Sarathy, "Predicting entropy and heat capacity

Mohammad Tamim Alkhodary

Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. Postdoctoral Fellow at École de technologie supérieure, Montreal, QC, Canada

Mohammad Shehab

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Education and Early Career Currently, Mohammad Shehab is a postdoctoral Researcher with CEMSE Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. Previously, he was with the University of Oulu, Finland, from which he obtained his doctoral degree in 2022. Prior to that, he obtained his B.Sc from Alexandria University in 2011, two M. Sc degrees from the Arab Academy and University of Oulu in 2014 and 2017, respectively. He worked as TA at Alexandria University and the Arab Academy in Egypt from 2012-2015. Shehab was a visiting researcher to TU Dresden, Aalborg

Mohammad Mohiuddin Azad

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Research Interests Study of greedy and dynamic programming algorithms for construction of exact and approximate decision trees, rules and reducts for decision tables with many-valued decisions Analysis and design of classifiers based on decision trees, reducts, and decision rule systems Data mining, Machine Learning Selected Publications Mohammad Azad, Igor Chikalov, Shahid Hussain and Mikhail Moshkov. “Restricted multi-pruning of decision trees”. MLDAS (Machine Learning and Data Analytics Symposium) 2016 organized by QCRI (Qatar Computing Research Institute) and Boeing International, Doha

Modar Alfadly

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Modar Alfadly is a Ph. D. candidate in Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) Group under the supervision of Prof. Bernard Ghanem at KAUST. Education and Early Career Alfadly received his bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in 2016. A year later, he obtained his master’s degree in Computer Science and successfully defended his thesis, titled “Analytic Treatment of Deep Neural Networks under Additive Gaussian Noise”. Research Interest Modar Alfadly is focusing on understanding deep neural networks to build more intelligent

Mohamed A Suliman

Visiting Scholar (former), Information Science Lab
MS Degree at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Ph.D. candidate, Imperial College London..

Merey Ramazanova

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Merey Ramazanova is a Computer Science Ph.D. Student in Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem. Education and Early Career Merey obtained her bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan in 2018. She also was a Research Intern at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Okinawa, Japan in 2018. Research Interest She is focusing on her research on data science, computer vision, and machine learning. Education Profile M.S., Computer

Mikhail Moshkov

Professor Moshkov specializes in various areas of discrete applied mathematics, theoretical computer science and operations research. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 research publications, including 10 books published by Springer.

Mher Safaryan

Mher Safaryan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with Professor Peter Richtarik at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Mher received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Yerevan State University, Armenia under the supervision of Prof. Grigori Karagulyan. Before joining KAUST, he was a Junior Researcher at the Institute of Mathematics of National Academy of Sciences, Real Analysis Department in Armenia. After that, he joined the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering Division (CEMSE)

Matthias Mueller

Matthias Mueller was an Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. candidate in Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) Group at Visual Computing Center (VCC) under the supervision of Prof. Bernard Ghanem at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Matthias graduated with a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Math Minor from Texas A&M University in 2011. After graduation, he joined P+Z Engineering in Munich, Germany as an Electrical Engineer and worked for 3 years on the development of mild-hybrid electric machines at BMW. In 2014, he started his M

Matheus Vinícius Medeiros de Souza

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Matheus Vinícius Medeiros de Souza is an MS/Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Computational Imaging Group under the supervision of Professor Wolfgang Heidrich. Before joining KAUST, Matheus obtained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. Research Interests Matheus's research interests include Computer Vision and Machine learning.

Matthew Sainsbury-Dale

Consultant, Statistics
Matthew Sainsbury-Dale is a PhD student at the University of Wollongong (UOW), and has already submitted his PhD. In 2022, Matthew spent 5 months visiting the Extreme Statistics Research Group at KAUST. Furthermore, from March to August 2023, he worked for KAUST in the extSTAT research group as a remote consultant. Since January 2024, while waiting for feedback from his PhD committee (and before relocating as a postdoc at KAUST), he is again working in the extSTAT group as a remote consultant. Education and Early Career Matthew Sainsbury-Dale obtained a Bachelor of Mathematics Advanced

Maxat Kulmanov

Research Scientist, Bio-Ontology Research Group
Maxat Kulmanov is a Research Scientist in the Bio-Ontology Research Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interests Maxat's research interests include bioinformatics, knowledge representation and reasoning, machine learning, neural networks, semantic web, and algorithms. He is interested in knowledge discovery and data integration using artificial intelligence and semantic web technologies in biology and biomedicine. Professional Profile 2020-Present: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Computational Bioscience Research Center, King Abdullah University of

Masheal Alghamdi

Masheal Alghamdi is a Ph. D. candidate in the Computational Imaging Group (VCCIMAGING) under the supervision of Professor Wolfgang Heidrich at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Masheal obtained her bachelor degree in Computer Science from King Abdul-Aziz University (KAU) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2009. After that she joined KAUST to receive her master degree in Computer Science in 2014. Masheal is a researcher in the National Center for Computation Technology and Applied Math (CTAM) at King Abdul-Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST)

Martins Bruvelis

Senior Information Technology Specialist, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering
Martins is a Tier 3 technical support specialist. He specializes in resolving complex IT infrastructure challenges, provides advanced support, and develops, maintains, and enhances critical software applications and tools. His quantum physics and data science background has refined an investigative, analytical, and data-driven perspective, enabling insightful decision-making and innovative interdisciplinary solutions when addressing complex issues across a broad spectrum of expertise.

Maria Sara Nour SADOUN

Visiting Student (former), Information Science Lab
Research internship in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology within EMANG as a Visiting Student on the topic of Epileptic Seizure Detection using Electroencephalography (EEG).

Majed Alzahrani

Majed Alzahrani obtained PhD degree in Computer Science from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in 2017. His PhD thesis supervisor was Professor Xin Gao. After graduating, he joined Saudi Aramco as a data scientist in its Drilling Data Science unit. Working in one of the largest companies in the world is a dream come true for many, for Majed Alzahrani, things couldn't be better. Research Interest Majed's research interests were in machine learning, structural bioinformatics, synthetic biology.

Marco Canini

Associate Professor, Computer Science
Professor Canini’s research seeks to improve networked-system design, implementation and operation concerning vital properties such as reliability, performance, security and energy efficiency.

Mamdouh AlJoud

Intern (former), Information Science Lab
Research Intern at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUS)

Maha Thafar

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Research Interests I am a computer scientist focusing on developing novel computational methods using artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and graph mining techniques to solve biomedical problems. I am developing these methods to be applied to large-scale chemical and biomedical data. Currently, I'm working on compound-protein interactions prediction and binding affinity prediction projects. My objective is to empower women in my country with a flourishing academic background that enables building better careers for themselves. Additionally, to create a research culture

Lin Chen

Lin is a visiting student in the Communication Theory Lab (CTL) under the supervision of Professor Mohamed-Slim Alouini at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Education and Early Career Lin is a 3rd-year bachelor student in Communication Engineering from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC). Research Interest Lin is interested in enhancing the performance of the communication system to meet the communication requirements of the evolving new application scenarios. She’s currently exploring the application of RIS and artificial intelligence in

Lu Yu

Lu Yu obtained his Ph.D. degree in computer science under the supervision of Prof. Xiangliang Zhang leading the MINE group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He mainly worked on learning representation of discrete data structure (e.g. graph, sequence, entity) that intersected with graph theory, optimization, adversarial learning. Before joining KAUST, he worked as a Data Mining Engineer at Alibaba Group. Ph.D. dissertation entitled “Exploring Entity Relationship in Pairwise Ranking: Adaptive Sampler and Beyond”. First employment: Senior Algorithm Engineer, Ant Group

Lijie Hu

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Lijie Hu is a Ph.D. student at ‌Privacy-Awareness, Responsibility and Trustworthy Laboratory under the supervision of Professor Di Wang at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Publications Lijie Hu, Shuo Ni, Hanshen Xiao and Di Wang. "High Dimensional Differentially Private Stochastic Optimization with Heavy-tailed Data". https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.11136. To appear in the 41st ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS 2022). Di Wang*, Jiahao Ding*, Lijie Hu, Zejun Xie, Miao Pan and Jinhui Xu. "Differentially Private Expectation

Lizhong Ding

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Structural and Functional Bioinformatics
Lizhong Ding worked as a Postdoctoral research fellow at Prof. Xin Gao's Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) during 2016-2018. Currently, Lizhong is a research scientist at the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence. Research Interests Machine learning theory Impact of approximation on learning algorithms, especially discrepancy bounds between approximate and accurate learning, for kernel learning and deep learning Large scale machine learning Large scale matrix analysis/approximation Scalable model

Lama Alssum

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Lama Alssum is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem in Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Lama studied Information technology at King Saud University (KSU) in Riyadh and graduated with a Bachelor degree in 2011. After her bachelor degree, she joined KSU as a Teaching Assistant. Later on, she continued her studies and earned her Master degree in Computer Science from the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, United Kingdom. Lama first joined

Li Zhou

Ms/PhD Student, CTF player, Interested in Reverse Engineering

Lama Burhan Niyazi

Ph.D. degree in the Communication Theory Lab (CTL) under the joint supervision of Professor Mohamed-Slim Alouini and Professor Tareq Al-Naffouri , King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Kumail Alhamoud

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Kumail Alhamoud is a Computer Science M.S Student at KAUST working under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem at the Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL). Before joining KAUST, Kumail obtained his B.S in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University in 2021. His current research interests include continual learning, learning from limited data under distribution shifts, and AI for Science and Biomedicine. Publications

Kuat Telegenov

An experienced Robotics Research Engineer and Laboratory Manager.

Konstantin Mishchenko

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Konstantin Mishchenko is a Ph.D. candidate at Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), studying under the supervision of Professor Peter Richtarik in his research group. Education and Early Career Konstantin Mishchenko obtained his bachelor degree in Computer Science and Physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 2016. After that in 2017, he received his master degree in Machine Learning MASH from Université Paris Dauphine in Paris, France. Konstantin had many internships during his studies. The most recent was with Amazon in

Khalil Elkhalil

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Electrical and Computer Engineering
PhD degree candidate of the Electrical Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

Kamilya Smagulova

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Communication and Computing Systems Lab
Education and early career Kamilya received her bachelor degree in Radio Engineering and Telecommunications from Almaty University of Power Engineering and Telecommunications (2008) and masters degree in Nanotechnology from University College London (2011). In 2021 she obtained her PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Nazarbayev University. Currently Kamilya is a postdoctoral fellow at Communication and Computing Systems Lab (CCSL) under supervision of Prof. Ahmed Eltawil. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of machine learning and resistive hardware accelerators

Kai Yi

Kai Yi is a Ph.D. candidate in Optimization and Machine Learning Lab led by Professor Peter Richtarik. He received his Computer Science MS from KAUST in Dec. 2021. Before that, he received B.Eng with honor from the Department of Software Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, in June 2019. He has interned at Tencent AI Lab, CMU, NUS, and SenseTime. Research Interest Kai Yi's current research interests include Machine learning optimization in the large-scale data/model era. Conceptual-level knowledge transfer learning: theories and applications. Specifically, he works on machine learning

Jürgen Schmidhuber

Professor, Computer Science
Professor Schmidhuber is a renowned computer scientist, best known for his pioneering work in artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning and artificial neural networks. He has authored more than 350 peer-reviewed papers and has provided AI strategies to several governments.

Jun Chen

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Jun Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Program under the supervision of Professor Mohamed Elhoseiny at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Jun obtained his bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China, 2018. He joined KAUST as a Master student under the supervision of Prof. Robert Hoehndorf and received his master's degree in Computer Science in 2019. Research Interests Jun's research interests include machine learning, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, knowledge

Juncai He

I am currently a research scientist in Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering Division (CEMSE) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). I received a B.S. degree in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from Sichuan University in 2014. In the Summer of 2019, I received my Ph.D. degree in Computational Mathematics under the supervision of Prof. Jinchao Xu and Prof. Jun Hu at Peking University in Beijing, China. From 2019 to 2020, I worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar supervised by Prof. Jinchao Xu in The Center for Computational Mathematics and Application

José Maria Sosa Gómez

PhD student at KAUST leveraging machine learning and radar systems to enhance patient procedures, under the guidance of Prof. Mohamed-Slim Alouini at the Communication Theory Lab (CTL).

Juan Manuel Marin Mosquera

PhD Student juan.mosquera@kaust.edu.sa Introduction Juan M. Marin is a PhD student in Electrical Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He received a BSc in Electrical Engineering from The National University of Colombia in 2021. His research focuses on Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing (DFOS) and developing multi-configuration systems based on optical fiber, embedding DFOS in optical communication and power delivery networks. Research Interests Fiber Optics Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing Machine Learning Selected Publications Yujian Guo*, Juan M. Marin*

Jorge Alejandro Amador Herrera

Research Interest His research interests include scientific and visual computing, numerical simulations, machine learning, and the modelling of natural phenomena. He works on physically-based simulations. Honors and Awards During his studies at UNAM, Alejandro has been awarded many times. In 2013, he received the UNAM Scholarship from the university. He was also awarded the Telmex Foundation Scholarship from 2013 to 2016, and the CONACYT Fellowship from 2017 to 2018. He graduated with summa cum laude in 2018. Alejandro has also received multiple awards from his participation in academic

Jiayao Zhang

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Jiayao Zhang is a Computer Science Master's student in the MS/Ph.D. program under the supervision of Professor Dominik Michels at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. Education and Early Career Jiayao completed her Bachelor's degree from the Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications. She was working with Prof. Chenqiang Gao on Event Detection and recognition topics. She was a visiting student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in China with Prof. Cewu Lu in the MVIG lab and also worked as a Research

Jia-Hong Huang

Jia-Hong Huang was a Master's student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Program under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem at Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Career Jia-Hong earned a double major bachelor's degree in Statistics and Mathematical Science from National Chengchi University in Taiwan in 2014. He received his master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from National Taiwan University in 2016. After that, he joined KAUST and received his second master's degree in Electrical Engineering in 2018

Jay Morgan

Visiting Student, Computer Science
Jay Morgan was a visiting student at (BORG) Bio-Ontology Research Group of Professor Robert Hoehndorf at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. ​Research Interests Jay's research is focused on the verification of machine learning (ML) models, in particular, deep learning. Reasoning as to the decision process of ML is becoming increasingly important especially those that are included in safety-critical systems. Therefore, verifying the properties of the model against requirements as well as interrogating the model itself could provide a great benefit.​​ His

Jesper Tegner

Professor, Bioscience
Jasper Tegner is an M.D./Ph.D., innovator and professor with over 350 publications, dedicated to exploring the interconnected mechanisms underlying life, intelligence and the mind. His research aims to advance fundamental progress in artificial intelligence by moving beyond engineering to understand the intrinsic modes of operation within cells, between cells and within the brain.

Ismail Ben Atitallah

Ismail Ben Atitallah was a ​MS Thesis Student at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Islam Ashry

Senior Research Scientist, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Senior Research Scientist with over 10 years of experience in optics, specializing in developing optical sensors as real-world solutions for underwater exploration, smart agriculture, and the oil and gas industry. Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), IEEE, and IEEE Photonics Society.

Ismail AlQerm

Ismail AlQerm obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Basem Shihada at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Currently, he is working as a Post-Doctorate Fellow at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA. Research Interests Ismail's research interests included Cognitive radios, Resource Allocation, Machine Learning, Cellular Networks, and HetNets. Thesis title: Novel Machine Learning-Based Techniques for Efficient Resource Allocation in Next Generation Wireless Networks. Academic Advisors Basem Shihada, Professor, Computer

Igor Sokolov

Igor Sokolov is an M.S. candidate in the KAUST Peter Richtarik Research Group under the supervision of Professor Peter Richtarik. Before joining KAUST, Igor obtained a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics and physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia. Research Interests Igor's research interests lie in the intersection of optimization and machine learning. He is interested in both the theoretical analysis of optimization algorithms as well as their practically efficient applications.

Ibrahim Alabdulmohsin

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Ibrahim Alabdulmohsin obtained a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science under the co-supervision of Professor Xiangliang Zhang at Machine Intelligence and kNowledge Engineering (MINE) Laboratory and Professor Xin Gao at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Currently, Ibrahim is working with IT Strategy and Technology Planning Department at Saudi Aramco. Pursued his Ph.D. degree at MINE Lab from 2012 - 2017. Ibrahim obtained his M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. Dissertation Title: Learning via Query

Houssem Sifaou

Houssem Sifaou is a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), working with Professor Mohamed-Slim Alouini in the Communication Theory Laboratory (CTL). Education and Early Career Houssem Sifaou received the Engineering Degree (Hons.) in Signal and Systems from Tunisia Polytechnic School, La Marsa, Tunisia, in 2014 and the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, in 2016. Scientific Interest Houssem Sifaou is interested in Random Matrix Theory

Irving Enrique Reyna Nolasco

Research Interests Irving Enrique Reyna Nolasco's research interests include numerical methods for partial differential equations, large eddy simulations, high order entropy stable schemes, machine learning, complex systems, and non-linear dynamics. Why did you choose your field of research? As a graduate student, I have always found satisfaction in developing scientific software and libraries for the simulation and visualization of different phenomena. I enjoy applying scientific computing tools and mathematical concepts to relevant problems in physics. By the end of my bachelor studies, I

Imane Boudellioua

Imane Boudellioua obtained her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Robert Hoehndorf at the Bio-Ontology Research Group (BORG) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Imene has a Master's degree in Computer Science from KAUST. During Master's her thesis supervisor was Professor Basem Shihada. Thesis title: " A Vehicular Guidance Wireless Sensor Actuator Network." Research Interests Imane Boudellioua's research interests include the application of machine learning and data mining algorithms for functional annotation of various biological

Igor Chikalov

Senior Research Scientist, Computer Science
Research Interests Application of dynamic programming to building decision trees and decision rules Machine learning Design of algorithms and complexity analysis Selected Publications I. Chikalov, V. Lozin, I. Lozina, M. Moshkov, H.S. Nguyen, A. Skowron, B. Zielosko, Three Approaches to Data Analysis: Test Theory, Rough Sets and Logical Analysis of Data, Intelligent Systems Reference Library, Vol. 41, Springer, 2012 I. Chikalov, Average Time Complexity of Decision Trees, Intelligent Systems Reference Library, Vol. 21, Springer, 2011. I. Chikalov, P. Yao, M. Moshkov, J.C. Latombe, Learning

Hussam Wael Ismail Ibraiwish

Hussam Ibraiwish is a Master’s student in the Communication Theory Lab (CTL) under the supervision of Professor Mohamed-Slim Alouini at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Hussam has obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Jordan in 2021. He was a visiting student at CTL in 2020 before becoming a KAUST student in 2021. Hussam was also the Vice Chair of the IEEE ComSoc in the University of Jordan. Research Interest Hussam is interested in machine learning and communication theory. He is particularly

Ibrahim Abdelaziz

Ibrahim Abdelaziz obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Panagiotis Kalnis from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interests Ibrahim Abdelaziz's research interests included Data Mining over large datasets, Distributed Systems, Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition. Selected Publications Using Advanced Hidden Markov Models for online handwriting recognition. Ibrahim Hosny, Sherif Abdou, Aly Fahmy In Proceeding of Asian Conference of Pattern Recognition (ACPR), (2011) Large Vocabulary Arabic Online Handwriting

Humam Alwassel

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Humam Alwassel is a Computer Science Ph.D. candidate in Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) Group under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Humam obtained his bachelor degree with double major in Computer Science and Mathematics from Cornell University in New York, USA in 2016. After that, he joined KAUST for the MS/PhD program and received his master degree in Computer Science in 2018. Research Interest He’s currently focused on the development of novel computer vision techniques for video

Hasan Abed Al Kader Hammoud

Hasan is an Electrical and Computer Engineering MS/Ph.D. student in Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) Group in Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem. Education and Early Career Hasan obtained his bachelor's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from American University of Beirut in 2020. He joined KAUST in 2020 to pursue his MS and PhD degrees. Research Interest Deep Learning Machine Learning Computer Vision Publications Rapid Adaptation in Online Continual Learning: Are We

Hajar El Hammouti

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Publications dblp Scopus LinkedIn Education Profile Ph.D. in Telecommunications and Computer Science, National Institute of Posts and Telecommunications (INPT), Rabat, Morocco, Jan. 2013- May. 2017. 3rd year of engineering studies at ENSEEIHT, Toulouse, France, 2011-2012. Engineering studies at INPT, Rabat, Morocco, 2009 - 2011. Awards and Distinctions Best Paper Award, UNet 2018. Best Student Paper Award, WINCOM 2015. Best Student Paper Award, NETYS 2015.

Haitham M. Ashoor

Research Interests Haitham Ashoor is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science program at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He is working under the supervision of Prof. Vladimir Bajic. He has obtained his BSc degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Jordan, Amman Jordan in 2008. He joined KAUST as an MSc student in 2009. In 2011, He finished his master studies under the supervision of Prof. Vladimir Bajic. His main research interests are developing computational methods for next-generation sequencing data analysis and applications of machine learning in

Guang An Ooi

Research Interests Guang develops systems for real-time wellbore casing inspection and 3D visualization. He constructs novel neural networks for electromagnetic inspection tools developed in conjunction with the MERGE team, which generates casing cross-sectional images from spatio-temporal data. In addition, Guang is interested in programming drilling simulators in Java and Python. Education Profile B.Sc., Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, 2017 M.Sc., Electrical Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia, 2019

Guolei Sun

Guolei Sun obtained his MS degree in the Computer Science program at Machine Intelligence and kNowledge Engineering (MINE) Laboratory under the supervision of Professor Xiangliang Zhang at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research interests Guolei's research interests include Machine learning and data mining. Education Profile ​B.E., Biomedical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science & Technology​, 2015​. M.Sc., Computer Science, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Grigory Malinovsky

Grigory Malinovsky is a M.S./Ph.D. candidate at the KAUST Optimization and Machine Learning Lab under the supervision of Professor Peter Richtarik. Before joining KAUST, Grigory obtained a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics and physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia. Research Interests Grigory's research interests include machine learning, optimization, and applied statistics. Specifically, he is interested in the theoretical aspects of optimization algorithms that can be applied to real machine-learning problems. Education Profile B.A., Major in Applied

Gian Marco Messa

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Gian Marco is a Ph.D. student at the Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Gian Marco, upon finishing high school in Lecce (Italy), applied to the Politecnico of Milan in the year 2009 in Physics engineering. Due to personal issues, he came back to his hometown to complete the Bachelor's Degree at the University of Salento in Biotechnology. For his master's degree, seeking innovation and cutting edge knowledge, he moved to the University of Bologna, which offered an M. Sc

Grigorii Malinovskii

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
I am a PhD student in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, advised by Prof. Peter Richtárik, working on optimization theory and its applications in Machine Learning. My hobbies include drums, fitness, martial arts, football, and basketball.

Francesco Napolitano

​Francesco is a Computer Scientist with a background in Mathematical Models and Machine Learning. He focused his M.Sc. (University of Salerno, SA, Italy) and Ph.D. (University of Salerno and the University of California, Irvine, CA, USA) on supervised and unsupervised data analysis, particularly for clustering of complex, high-dimensional data. He developed and applied data analysis techniques to problems from different fields, including fault detection in avionics and computational pharmacology, before focusing on bioinformatics and systems biology. Research Interests Francesco's main

Filip Hanzely

Filip Hanzely is a recent PhD graduate from the group of Peter Richtarik. His research focuses mostly on various aspects of optimization for machine learning, designing provably efficient algorithms for solving big data problems. Filip is joining Toyota Technological Institute in Chicago (TTIC) as a research assistant professor in December 2020. Education and Early Career Filip Hanzely graduated with honor for his bachelor degree in Economics and Financial Mathematics from Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. Later on in 2017, he received his master in science degree in Mathematics and

Fuad Jamour

Fuad Jamour is a Ph.D. student in InfoCloud Research Group (CLOUD) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Panagiotis Kalnis. Research Interests Fuad's research interests include Data Management and Machine Learning. Education Profile ​B.Sc. of Computer Engineering, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan.

Francesco Orabona

Associate Professor, Computer Science
Achieving "parameter-free" machine learning is the primary focus of Professor Francesco Orabona. He is particularly interested in designing superior algorithms to train deep learning models.

Fouzi Harrou

Research Scientist, Statistics
Dr. Harrou received an M.Sc. degree in telecommunications and networking from the University of Paris VI and the Ph.D. degree in systems optimization and security from the University Technology of Troyes (UTT), France. He was an Assistant Professor at UTT for one year and was an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Automotive and Transport Engineering, Nevers, France, for one year. He was also a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the Systems Modelling and Dependability Laboratory, UTT, for one year. He is currently a Research Scientist with the Division of Computer, Electrical, and

Fawaz Alsolami

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Research Interests Sequential optimization for inhibitory rules relative to length and coverage Analysis and design of classifiers based on inhibitory rules and trees Machine Learning and Data Mining Selected Publications F. Alsolami, T. Amin, M. Moshkov, B. Zielosko: Comparison of heuristics for optimization of association rules. CS&P 2015: 4-11 (2015) F. Alsolami, T. Amin, I. Chikalov, M. Moshkov, B. Zielosko: Dynamic programming approach for construction of association rule systems. CS&P 2015: 12-21 (2015) F. Alsolami, I. Chikalov, M. Moshkov: Comparison of heuristics for inhibitory rule

Fares Fourati

Fares Fourati is a Ph.D. student at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), under the supervision of Professor Mohamed-Slim Alouini. Education Fares Fourati has studied mathematics and physics at the University of Sfax and has been among the top 1% in the Tunisian national contest of mathematics and physics in 2017. In 2020, he received his diplôme d’ingénieur with first-class honors in multidisciplinary engineering from Ecole Polytechnique de Tunisie. In 2022, he received his Master of Science in electrical and computer engineering from KAUST. Early Career Before

Fat-hy Omar Rajab

Master's Thesis Abstract The multi-agent robotic system has been proved to be more superior in undertaking functionalities, arduous or even impossible when performed by single agents. The increased efficiency in multi-agent systems is achieved by the execution of the task in a cooperative manner. But to achieve cooperation in multi-agent systems, a good localization system is an important prerequisite. Currently, most of the multi-agent systems rely on the use of the GPS to provide global positioning information which suffers great deterioration in performance in indoor applications, and also

Fabian Heilbron

Fabian Caba Heilbron was a Ph.D. student in Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) Group under the supervision of Prof. Bernard Ghanem at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He is currently a Research Scientist at Adobe Research in San Jose, California. Educ ation and Early Career Fabian has a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics Engineering from Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia, 2011. In 2013, he received his Master Degree in Electronics Engineering from Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia. He joined KAUST as a Ph.D. candidate and received his

Eva Bones

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Eva Bones is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Program under the supervision of Professor Ivan Viola in the Nanovisualization Research Group at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interest Eva is focusing on Computer Graphics and Visualization. Academic Advisors Ivan Viola, Professor, Computer Science.

Faisal Mushayt

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Education 2020.09 - Present M.S. in Computer Science, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, KSA 2016.09 - 2020.08 B.S. in Computer Science, Boston University, USA Professional Profile 2018.06 - 2018.09 Data Scientist Intern, School of Business, LISH, Harvard, USA 2017.09 - 2018.05 Teaching Assistant, Math & Computer Science, Boston University, USA Areas of Expertise and Research Interests ​Machine Learning Learning in Physical Environments AI & Robotics Safety Engineering

Enas M. Odat

Enas Odat received the B.S. degree in computer engineering from the Jordan University of Science and Technology in 2009, and the M.S. degree from the Department of Computer Science, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, in 2011, where she is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree. Her research interests include machine learning, game theory, and Cyber-Physical systems. Education Profile MS. Computer Sciences, King Abdullah University of Sciences and Technology (KAUST), 2011 BS. Computer Engineering, Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST), 2009

Eslam Abdelrahman BAKR

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Eslam BAKR is a Computer Science Ph.D. candidate at the Visual Computing Center (VCC)/Vison-CAIR at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Mohamed Elhoseiny. Education and Early Career BS in Computer Engineering, Cairo University,(Sep 2012-Jul 2017)Studied programming, computer architecture, electronics, communications, waves, and computer networks. M.Sc in Computer Engineering, Cairo University,(Mar 2019-May 2022) Work Experience: TA at Zewail City of Science and Technology, (Sep 2020-21) Instructor at Faculty of Computer Science, Ain

Elnur Gasanov

Elnur Gasanov is a master student at Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), studying under the supervision of Professor Peter Richtárik in his research group. Education and Early Career Elnur Gasanov obtained his bachelor degree in Applied Mathematics and Physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) in Moscow, Russia in 2018. Research Interest His research interests are in optimization and machine learning. Education Profile ​B.Sc., Applied Mathematics and Physics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (State

Egor Shulgin

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Egor Shulgin is a CS student in the MS/Ph.D. program under the supervision of Professor Peter Richtarik at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. Education and Early Career Egor obtained his bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) in 2019. He first came to KAUST for a research visit in 2019. Later, he joined Prof. Peter Richtarik's group as a MS/Ph.D. student. In 2021 Egor did a research internship with Distributed AI team at the

Emaad Ahmed Manzoor

Emaad Ahmed Manzoor obtained his M.S. degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Panagiotis Kalnis at InfoCloud Research Group (CLOUD) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in 2016. Research Interests Emaad's research interests included Diffusion of information, influence in networks, Algorithms for machine learning and optimization on graphs. Education Profile MS Computer Science, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia (2013-2015). BE Computer Science, BITS - Pilani Goa Campus, India. (2008 - 2012) Professional

Ebrahim Safadi

Internship at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Dmitry Kovalev

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Education Dmitry obtained a B.S. degree from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow, Russia, in 2018. He is an M.S. in the Computer Science program at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology as of Fall 2018. Publications Dmitry Kovalev, Samuel Horvath and Peter Richtárik. Don't Jump Through Hoops and Remove Those Loops: SVRG and Katyusha are Better Without the Outer Loop, arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.08689, 2019. Dmitry Kovalev, Peter Richtárik, Eduard Gorbunov, Elnur Gasanov. Stochastic Spectral and Conjugate Descent Methods . Advances in Neural Information Processing

Djidenou Montcho

Ph.D. Student, Statistics
Djidenou (Hans) Montcho is a Ph.D. candidate In Statistics at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), studying under the supervision of Professor Håvard Rue in his research group. Education and Early Career Hans obtained his Bachelor Degree in Applied Mathematics at the Federal University of Rio Grande in Brazil. He graduated with a Master of Science from the Federal University of Sao Carlos and the University of Sao Paulo. He has worked as a data scientist for a large credit bureau in Brazil. Research Interest His research interest is mainly in Bayesian and

Dominik L. Michels

Associate Professor, Computer Science
Professor Michels is a leading computer scientist who proactively designs strategies to face upcoming digitization challenges. His outstanding research has been recognized by the scientific community within and beyond KAUST.

Di Wang

Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Professor Wang's research addresses issues and societal concerns arising from machine learning, particularly in the areas of privacy, security, safety, fairness, robustness, interpretability and transparency. He aims to develop provable and practical algorithms to address trustworthiness issues in machine learning.

Dimitrios Kleftogiannis

Dimitrios Kleftogiannis obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Panagiotis Kalnis at InfoCloud Research Group in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), in 2016. Research Interests Dimitrios works mostly on knowledge discovery technologies with applications in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. ​His research interests include Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Data Analysis of NGS-derived data. He has worked extensively on the prediction of distal DNA regulatory elements focusing on the category of enhancers. He is

David Keyes

Senior Associate to the President, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
David Keyes works at the interface of computational science and engineering and high performance computing, which he helped edit into the DNA of KAUST as a founding Dean in 2009 and then as director of the Extreme Computing Research Center. He currently serves as Senior Associate to the President, Chair of the KAUST RDIA Economies of the Future committee, and delegate to the Saudi Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Da Li

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Da Li is a Master student in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Ivan Viola at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Chisato Fujii

Chisato Fujii obtained her Master's degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Prof. Xin Gao at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interests Chisato's research interests included Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Born in Japan, Chisato is a software engineer at a fashion technology startup in Cambridge. She works on the development of 3-dimensional garment rendering on a customizable body shape unique to the shopper's size. How would you describe your work/activities at KAUST? ''I studied a

Cian Leo Blake

Cian is an MS/Ph.D. student in the Communication Theory Lab (CTL) under the supervision of Professor Mohamed-Slim Alouini at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Cian obtained BSc in Physics with a Computer Science minor from New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) in 2023. Alongside his studies, Cian founded an autotech startup called Genius Autos (www.genius-autos.com) that aims to optimize the global used auto parts supply chain in the age of artificial intelligence. Research Interest Cian is focusing in the area of wireless communication

Cheng-Long Wang

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Cheng-Long Wang is currently a third-year Ph.D. student at ‌Provable Responsible AI and Data Analytics (PRADA) Lab under the supervision of Professor Di Wang at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). His research is on machine unlearning, aiming to bridge the gap between personal/organizational data protection requirements and digital-world workflows.

Cheng Wang

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Cheng Wang received his PhD in the Computer Science Program under the supervision of Professor Helmut Pottmann at the Visual Computing Center (VCC). He is now an Assistant Professor at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom Education and Early Career Cheng received his Bachelor's Degree in Automation from Tsinghua University, China in 2016. He joined KAUST to continue his studies and received his Master's Degree in Computer Science in 2018. Research Interest Cheng is mainly interested in Computer Graphics, Geometric Computing, and Machine Learning. Education Profile M.S., Computer

Biao Zhang

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Biao Zhang is a Computer Science Ph.D. candidate at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Peter Wonka in his research group. Education and Early Career Biao Zhang obtained his bachelor degree in Mathematics and master degree in Applied Mathematics from Xi’an Jiaotong University in China. Research Interest Biao Zhang is mainly interested in machine learning and computer vision. Education Profile M.S., Applied Mathematics, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China B.S., Mathematics, Xi’an Jiaotong University

Bernard Ghanem

Professor Ghanem's research focuses on computer vision and machine learning, emphasizing large-scale video understanding, vision for automated navigation and theoretical foundations.

Azza Althagafi

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Azza Althagafi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Bio-Ontology Research Group (BORG) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Robert Hoehndorf. Professional Profile ​2016 to present Graduate Student, KAUST, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. 2015 - 2016: Teaching Assistant, Taif University, Taif, Saudi Arabia. 2014 – 2015: Volunteer Teaching Assistant, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia. 2013 – 2016: Assistant Trainer, Mawhiba, The King Abdulaziz and His Companions' Foundation for Giftedness and Creativity, Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Scientific and

Basit Olakunle Alawode

Visiting student at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).under the supervision of Professor Tareq AlNaffouri.

Ayan Shymyrbay

Ayan Shymyrbay is a Ph.D. candidate in the electrical and computer engineering program at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Arturo Magana Mora

​Arturo Magana-Mora obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Prof. Vladimir Bajic in 2017 and later joined the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Com. Bio Big-Data Open Innovation Lab (CBBD-OIL). Research Interest His research interests include the development of novel machine-learning and data mining techniques to address the complex problems in biology. His research work has resulted in several peer-reviewed

Avetik Karagulyan

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Optimization and Machine Learning
Avetik Karagulyan have joined the team of Peter Richtarik at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as a Postdoctoral fellow in November 2021. Education and Early Career Avetik Karagulyan has defended his thesis at Center of Research in Economics and Statistics (CREST), Paris in June 2021 entitled as "Sampling with the Langevin Monte-Carlo" under the supervision of professor Arnak Dalalyan. In 2018, he received MSc Mathematics, Vision, Learning (MVA) diploma at ENS Paris-Saclay with highest honors. Avetik Karagulyan graduated from

Ashraf M. Kibriya

Research Interests ​My research interests include the application of Big Data and Machine Learning techniques to real-world problems in various domains, including biology and biomedicine. In particular, I'm interested in Deep Learning, Text Mining, Network Analysis and Graph Mining. Professional Profile ​2018-Present: Postdoctoral Fellow, KAUST, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia 2011-2018: Doctoral Fellow, KU Leuven, Belgium 2010-2011: Pre-doctoral fellow, KU Leuven, Belgium 2007-2009: Database developer / Datamining specialist, Datamine Ltd., New Zealand 2002-2005: Research Programmer, Machine Learning

Azimkhon Ostonov

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Azimkhon Ostonov is a PhD candidate at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), studying under the supervision of Professor Mikhail Moshkov in Extensions of Dynamic Programming, Machine Learning, Discrete Optimization (TREES). Education and Early Career Azimkhon Ostonov studied at the National University of Uzbekistan in Uzbekistan. He obtained his bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics and Informatics in 2012 and his master's degree in Computer Systems and their Software in 2014. Azimkhon started his career as a junior programmer at Fido-Biznes in Tashkent. Then, he

Asaad S. Alghamdi

Arman Ibrayeva

Ph.D. Student, Mechanical Engineering
Education 2021.08 - Present Ph.D. Student, KAUST, KSA 2018.08 - 2020.07 M.S. in Mechanics, Kazakh National University, Kazakhstan 2014.08 - 2018.07 B.S. in Mechanics, Kazakh National University, Kazakhstan Professional Profile 2020.03 - 2021.11 Researcher, Institute of Mechanics and Machine Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, Kazakhstan 2019.06 - 2021.11 Engineer, KOLSAJ STROJ, Kazakhstan 2014.05 - 2015.05 Laboratory assistant, Fluid and Gas Mechanics Lab, Kazakh National University, Kazakhstan Selected Publications S. Ibrayev, N. Jamalov, A. Ibrayeva, G. Mukhambetkaliyeva "Optimal

Anna Fruehstueck

Anna Fruehstueck was a Ph. D. candidate under the supervision of Prof. Peter Wonka at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and successfully defended her PhD in Computer Science on April 17, 2023. Education and Early Career Anna Fruehstueck obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Media Informatics and Visual Computing from Vienna University of Technology in Austria in 2011. Later on in 2015, she received her M.Sc. degree in Visual Computing from Vienna University of Technology in Austria. During her studies, Anna worked as software developer at SimVis in Vienna, Austria. And in

Arnaud Dethise

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Arnaud Dethise is a PhD candidate in Computer Science under the guidance of Professor Marco Canini. He completed his Bachelor's degree in Engineering and Master's degree in Computer Science in 2015 and 2017 respectively, from UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Arnaud has a strong interest in machine learning applied to distributed systems and is currently pursuing his doctoral research in this field. His specific research interests include Neural Networks, trustworthiness, verifiability and explainability, and model privacy, with a focus on exactness and provable guarantees. Arnaud’s goals

Aritra Dutta

Aritra Dutta is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), working with Professor Panagiotis Kalnis in his research group. Prior to that, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Optimization and Machine Learning group of Professor Peter Richtárik. Education and Early Career Aritra Dutta received his bachelor degree in Mathematics (Hons.), Minor in Physics and Statistics from Presidency College in Calcutta University. He obtained a master degree in Mathematics and Computing from Indian

Amine Bejaoui

Amine Bejaoui was an MS/Ph.D. student in the Communication Theory Lab (CTL) under the supervision of Professor Mohamed-Slim Alouini at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Amine Bejaoui obtained his engineering degree with majors in Economics and Scientific management from Ecole Polytechnique de Tunisie (EPT) , Tunisia, in 2015. Research Interest The scientific interests of Amine Bejaoui lies in the area of statistics, machine learning and the applications of Random Matrix Theory. Publications dblp Scopus LinkedIn Education Profile M.Sc. in

Amin Almozel

Education 2021.01 - Present Ph.D. Student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, KSA 2018.08 - 2019.12 M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, KAUST, KSA 2014.08 - 2018.05 B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Rochester, USA Selected Publications A. Almozel, J.S. Shamma, "Competitive Drone Racing Using Asymmetric Games" IEEE 18th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR), 349-356, 8 (2021). DOI: 10.1109/UR52253.2021.9494629 Areas of Expertise and Research Interests Autonomous and Intelligent Systems​

Amanat Kafizov

Education & Early Career Amanat was graduated from Nazarbayev University in 2019 where he received a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Amanat was a participant of Erasmus+ student exchange program. During this program, he studied fall semester 2018 at Ecole Centrale de Nantes university as a Foundation Master student in Control, Robotics and Signals. Research Interest Amanat did a summer research internship 2018 at University at Buffalo, New York, USA. He was working on Terahertz (THz) communication networks under a supervision of professor Josep Jornet. To be

Alibek Sailanbayev

Alibek Sailanbayev is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science at Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), studying under the supervision of Professor Peter Richtarik in his research group. Education and Early Career Alibek obtained his bachelor degree Applied Mathematics from Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. He joined KAUST in Fall 2017 and received his M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences in December 2018. He is now pursuing Ph.D. studies. Alibek took a Summer Internship at Loria/Inria

Alyazeed Basyoni

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Alyazeed Basyoni is a CS Master Student under the supervision of Professor Peter Richtarik at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Alyazeed joined Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and earned his bachelor degree in Computer Science with minor in Mathematics in 2018. Education Profile B.S., Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, 2018

Alya AlShaikh

Alya AlShaikh is currently an undergraduate student at Alfaisal University in Riyadh, KSA. She is pursuing a Software Engineering BSc specializing in Cyber Security and Machine Learning. Alya joined the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems Lab (SENTRY) led by Professor Konstantinou as an Accelerated Bachelor’s and Master's (ABM) student. Her research interests include applying machine learning techniques to enhance cyber defense strategies.

Alexandra Irger

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Alexandra Irger is a Master student in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Ivan Viola at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Before coming to KAUST, Alexandra graduated from TU Wien with a BSc in Media Informatics and Visual Computing in 2023. Research Interest Alexandra is focusing on Scientific Visualization and Computer Graphics.

Aku Jaakko Alexis Kammonen

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Stochastic Numerics Research Group
Aku Jaakko Alexis Kammonen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stochastic Numerics Research Group under the supervision of Professor Raul F. Tempone at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interests Aku's research interests include Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Random Features, Spectral Bias, Adversarial Attacks, and Numerical Analysis. Selected Publications A. Kammonen, L. Liang, A. Pandey, and R. Tempone (2024, March 19–23). Comparing Spectral Bias and Robustness For Two-Layer Neural Networks: SGD vs Adaptive Random Fourier Features [Poster presentation]

Ahmed Abdulmajeed Alabdulkarim

Ahmed Abdulmajeed Alabdulkarim earned a master's degree from KAUST in 2011. His research interests are in the field of big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and he is now pursuing his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S. He received his bachelor's degree with honors in computer science from King Saud University, where he graduated at the top of his class. From a young age, Alabdulkarim was passionate about computers. Studying computer science was his drive and motivation to continue his university studies. He explained that he chose KAUST for

Ahmed Foud Ali Mehdi AlMehdhar

Visiting Student (former), Electrical and Computer Engineering
Visiting Student at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Ahmed Mohamed Abdelmoniem Sayed

Dr. Ahmed Sayed is a Postdoctoral research fellow at ECRC, working with Professor Marco Canini. He is focused on tackling challenging problems related mainly to improve the performance and understanding of machine learning systems and their usage for optimizing and automating computer and network systems. Why KAUST? KAUST is the beacon for innovation and creativity in the middle-east area and they follow the model of HKUST to become a world-wide top-tier leading university in science and technology. Why networking The intersection point between Networked Systems & Machine Learning is a very

Ahmed Douik

Visiting B.S. Student, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering , Quantitative Researcher at Chicago Trading Company PhD candidate at California Institute of Technology

Abdulwahab Felemban

Ph.D. Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering CEMSE, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST),completed MSc under the supervision of Prof. Tareq Al-Naffouri.

Adil Salim

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Computer Science
Adil Salim is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with Professor Peter Richtarik at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Dr. Salim earned his Master degrees in Data Science and Statistical Engineering from ENSAE ParisTech and in Probability Theory and Stochastic Modeling from Paris XI University in France in 2015. He received his Ph.D. in Machine Learning from Télécom ParisTech in France in 2018. Before joining KAUST, Adil worked in many positions starting from an Auditor for banks and insurance companies

Abeer Almutari

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Abeer Almutari obtained her Master's degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Robert Hoehndorf at Bio-Ontology Research Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interests Abeer's research interests included bioinformatics, machine learning and building new automated models using artificial intelligence. Education ​B.Sc. Electrical & Computer Engineering, King Abdul-Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 2016

Abdulrahman Alanazi

Visiting Scholar (former), Information Science Lab
Visiting Scholar, Information Science Lab at Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) , Assistant Professor at King Saud University

Adel Bibi

Adel Bibi is a postdoctoral research assistant in computer vision and machine learning at the Torr Vision Group working with Professor Philip Torr at the University of Oxford. Prior to that, he received his MSc and PhD degrees from King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) where he was part of the Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) advised by Professor Bernard Ghanem. Education and Early Career Adel Bibi has a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Kuwait University in 2014. He received his Master Degree in Electrical Engineering from King Abdullah University of

Abdulmajeed Aljaloud

Visiting Student, Computer Science
Visiting Student Research Program ,Research Intern at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Abdulellah Abualshour

Abdulellah Abualshour is a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Prof. Bernard Ghanem at the Visual Computing Center (VCC) in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Abdulellah was chosen to join the KAUST Gifted Student Program (KGSP). He is a graduate of Rutgers University where he received a B.S. degree in Computer Science, with a focus on data science and artificial intelligence. Regarding his early career, Abdulellah did many internships during his studies. In 2015, he worked for 1 year as a Public Relations Officer at Rutgers U niversity in

Abdullah Khamis

Abdullah Khamis graduated with a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from KAUST under the supervision of Professor Vladimir Bajic and Associate Professor Xin Gao. He now works as the Director of Data Science in the Center for Strategic Studies (CSS) of the Royal Court of Saudi Arabia. He leads the Data Science team in developing several machine learning based predictive models such as sentiment analysis and prediction. Research Interest Abdullah's research interests were in bioinformatics and machine learning.

Abdullah Muhammad Kamal

Visiting Student, Computer Science
Abdullah Muhammad-Kamal is a visiting student from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom at (BORG) Bio-Ontology Research Group of Professor Robert Hoehndorf at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. Currently on his placement year, interning with the Bio-Ontology Research Group at KAUST, he will be graduating with his Bachelor's degree in Computer and Management Sciences in the summer of 2021. Research Interests ​Abdullah's research interests include Bioinformatics, Machine Learning, and Data Science.

Abdulrahman Aljedaibi

Electrical Engineering PhD student at CEMSE, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Abdullah Ahmed Zayat

Visiting Student Research Program under the supervision of Professor Tareq Al-Naffouri ,Research Intern at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Abdullah Hamdi

Abdullah Hamdi is a Ph.D. candidate in Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Bernard Ghanem. Education and Early Career In 2016, Abdullah Hamdi obtained his bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. After that, he joined KAUST to proceed in the same field of study and received his master degree in 2017 in Computer Vision track. Research Interest Machine Learning Robustness of Deep Learning Computer Vision

Abdullah Adil Albakry

Education and early career: I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer engineering with a mathematics minor from North Carolina State University (NCSU) in the United States. Now, I am a MS/PhD student at KAUST supervised by Dr. Ahmed Eltawil. Research Interest: Machine Learning and Communication Education Profile B.Sc., Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University, United States, 2020.

Abderrazak Chahid

Abderrazak Chahid is a PhD candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering department within CEMSE division. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Power Electronics from Sultan Moulay Slimane University in Morocco. He then got a Master degree in Electrical Engineering from the National School of Applied Sciences in Morocco before obtaining a second Master of Science degree in Embedded Systems from Lorraine University in France. Abderrazak is currently working on developing biomedical signal/image processing: MRS water suppression, MRI image denoising. He is

Abdallah Al-Moubayed

MS Degree , Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering ,King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) .Now Abdallah is Visiting Student to (KAUST)