MEMBERS

I received my B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1981) and M.Sc. degree (1989) in Mechanical Engineering (stress analysis area) from Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt. In 1991, I got a scholarship from the INDO/ARE Cultural Exchange Program under which I earned my Ph.D. degree in the Mechanical Engineering (Fatigue and Fracture Mechanics area) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB), Mumbai, India, in 1995. After awarding the PhD degree, I have started working as a full-time lecturer (1995) at the Mechanical Design Department, Helwan University. In September 2000, I joined the UAEU as assistant professor in 2005, I was promoted to the rank of associate professor and in Spring 2014 I have promoted to full Professor at UAEU.

Throughout my career, I have taught a wide spectrum of courses at undergraduate (department, college, ERU and university) and graduate (in 3 graduate programs) levels. Varieties of teaching aids/methods are used in delivering the material of each course. I have supervised/co-supervised 20 PhD and more than 40 Master students from different departments/colleges. I am active researcher in several attractive topics of engineering applications. My research has resulted in more than 200 referred and peer reviewed international journals and conferences. I have recognized as World’s Top 2% scientist by Stanford University. Received UAE University Award for Excellence in Scholarship, college excellence award in scholarship in academic year 2020-2021. I have also awarded excellence allowance for last 4 years. I am Editor of many international journals and Editor in chief of Emirates Journal for Engineering Research (EJER). With my students, I have won many best paper awards and other competitions.

Prof. Abderrahim Nemmar is Professor of Physiology at the United Arab Emirates University, College of Medicine and Health Sciences. He served as Director of Zayed Center for Health Sciences. He received his PhD degree in 2000 from the University of Liege (Belgium). He worked at the University of Leuven (K.U.Leuven, Belgium), Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dept. of Pathophysiology (Pulmonology). In 2007, he joined the United Arab Emirates University, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dept. of Physiology. He teaches undergraduate and graduate medical physiology and pathophysiology. He received the Excellence in Student Mentors Award and Excellence in Teaching Award from the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University several times

Professor Dr. Abdu Adem received his Ph.D from Uppsala University (Sweden) in Pharmacology in 1987. Following a postdoctoral training at the Institute Pasteur (Paris, France), CNRS (France) and Karolinska Institute (Stockholm, Sweden) Prof. Adem accepted a postdoctoral position at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. In 1991, while still at the Karolinska Institute, he received his Docent title (Habilitation). In 1999 he was recruited from the Karolinska Institute to join the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain as a full Professor. In 2020 Prof. Adem was recruited by the College of Medicine at Khalifa University. In the last 20 years in the UAE Prof. Adem has made significant contributions in the areas of Research, Teaching and Service.

• Aleppo University; Syria (MD, 1981)
• State University of New York (PhD, 1995, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology)
• American Board of Pediatrics (1988 to present)
• American Board of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology (1992 to present)

Abiola Senok is Professor of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, College of Medicine, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine & Health Sciences (MBRU), Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She obtained her PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, United Kingdom. Her research work in infectious diseases with particular focus on antimicrobial resistance has yielded novel findings on the molecular epidemiology and determinants of dissemination of multidrug resistant organisms in the Arabian Gulf region. Her research incorporates extensive use of genotyping techniques including DNA microarray-based assays, whole genome sequencing, next generation sequencing and bioinformatics analysis. In recent years, her work on methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus has enhanced the understanding of the unique evolution of this important drug resistant pathogen in the Arabian Gulf region. In the wider context of infectious diseases her work extends to domains of microbial pathogenicity, sexually transmitted infections, enteric pathogens, probiotics and human microbiome. As an advocate for research and education in infection control strategies, she pioneered and was inaugural program director for the first graduate program in infection prevention and control in the region. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, she has collaborated in conducting research in viral diagnostics, viral genomics, host response mechanisms, and mathematical modelling. She was lead researcher in the landmark studies on the use of saliva for COVID-19 testing. Abiola is a member of the UAE National Sub-Committee for Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance, UAE COVID-19 Research Committee, and the COVID-19 Research Committee of Abu Dhabi. She is on the Expert Panel of Infectious Disease Hub (part of the Future Science Group, UK). She also serves as Senior Editor, Journal of Infection in Developing Countries and Associate Editor PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Having lived and worked across four continents, Abiola is a global citizen who enjoys developing international collaborations. As an academic, she is very passionate about mentoring the next generation of doctors and scientists.

Afaf Kamal-Eldin was born 1962 in Sinnar, Sudan. She is a professor of Food Science specialized in the area of food composition and analysis with particular emphasis on bioactive components and their nutritional benefits. Prof. Afaf earned her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in chemistry in 1986 and 1990 from the University of Khartoum, Sudan and in 1993, she received her Ph.D. degree from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala, Sweden. She has edited 6 books and published more than 200 original papers, review articles, and book chapters on the subject. Prof. Kamal-Eldin has supervised 17 PhD and 19 MSc theses. In 2009, Prof. Afaf was recognized as one of 400 leading researchers in Life Sciences in Stockholm-Uppsala (Sweden) and in 2010, she received the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Silver Medal for great achievements. Prof. Afaf was a member of the reference group of the International Program in Chemical sciences (IPICS) at Uppsala University (2003-2010) and since 2003, she is an advisor for the Food Science program at the International Foundation of Science (IFS), Stockhom, Sweden. After 20 years at SLU, professor Afaf joined the United Arab Emirates University in AlAin, UAE, in 2010. At UAEU, she served as chair for the Department of Food Science (2010-2016) and as acting Dean for the College of Food & Agriculture (2015-2016).

Dr. Ahmed Al Shoaibi is currently an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Senior Vice President of Academic and Student Services at Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi. He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in 2008. Additionally, he has a Master of Business Administration from the University of Strathclyde. As SVP of Academic and Student Services, Dr. Al Shoaibi leads a variety of initiatives to promote successful learning outcomes for students and improved student retention. He leads the identification and recruitment of high quality students, supports their transition into university and works collaboratively with faculty, librarians, staff and administrators in initiative and policy implementation designed to promote student success in and out of the classroom. Additionally, Dr. Al Shoaibi promotes the support of faculty and staff to enhance teaching and learning so that students develop the skills, knowledge and attitudes to become successful 21st Century engineers, scientists and medical doctors.

Dr. Ahmed Al-Durra received his BSc, MSc, and PhD in ECE from Ohio State University in 2005, 2007, and 2010, respectively (with Summa Cum laude in all three degrees). He was granted a full scholarship from the Distinguished Student Scholarship of the Presidential Office to study the bachelors in the USA as one of the top 20 UAE high-school achievers in 2000. In 2005, he obtained the International Engineering Consortium Award for the top graduating student in Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, Ohio State University. He joined the Electrical Engineering Department at the Petroleum Institute (PI), UAE, as an Assistant Professor in 2010; he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015. In 2014, he obtained the PI Research & Scholarship Award for Junior Faculty, and he was elevated to the grade of IEEE Senior Member. In 2020, he was promoted to Professor at the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department, Khalifa University of Science & Technology, UAE. He is now the Associate Provost for Research in Khalifa University.

Dr. Ahsan Ul Haq Qurashi is Associate Professor in Department of Chemistry Khalifa University. He received his PhD from Jeonbuk National University, South Korea 2008, and completed post-doctoral work at Toyama University, Toyama, Japan under the Venture Business Laboratory (VBL) program in 2010. He served as Assistant and Associate Professor in King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia from 2010-2019. He also remains visiting faculty in EPFL Switzerland, Tokyo University and Nagoya University, Japan. He is trained as nanotechnologist and published more than 110 articles in peer reviewed SCI journals, presented over 60 papers in international conferences proceedings, various invited talks worldwide and keynote speaker. He contributed 7 book chapters and edited book on “Metal Chalcogenide Nanostructures for Renewable Energy Applications” and hold 5 patents (USPTO) as inventor and co-inventor on new materials and green hydrogen production technology. His research focus is on new functional nanomaterials development, investigate structure-property relationship for energy conversion devices and systems such as green hydrogen production, carbon dioxide conversion into clean fuels, energy storage (electrodes and electrolytes) and biomedical applications. He received governmental and industrial grants worth $4 million, as principal and co-investigator. He is subject editor/editorial board member in International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (sabbatical), Materials Research Bulletin and Scientific Reports.

Alawi Alsheikh-Ali is an Emirati physician-scientist and currently serves as the Deputy Director General of the Dubai Health Authority. He is a Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and member of the Board of Trustees at the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences where he was previously the Founding Dean of the College of Medicine and University Provost.  A consultant cardiac electrophysiologist, he was part of the team that established the first comprehensive cardiac arrhythmia service in the UAE at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City where he served as Section Head of Electrophysiology and Chair of the Cardiac Sciences Institute. Dr. Alsheikh-Ali holds a bachelor of science in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master of science in applied physiology from Boston University, and a master of science in clinical research and a Doctor of Medicine from Tufts University.  He completed his clinical residency and fellowships in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease and clinical cardiac electrophysiology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston leading to triple certification from the American Board of Medical Specialties. He is a member of the Emirates Scientist Council and of the Dubai Future Councils. Dr. Alsheikh-Ali is active in several professional societies in the UAE and the region and is Past President of the Emirates Cardiac Society and member of the Board of Directors of the Gulf Heart Association and a Founding Board Member of the Gulf Heart Rhythm Society. 

ali Al-Marzouqi is a professor of Chemical Engineering and currently the Dean at the College of Graduate Studies, UAE University. Prof. Al-Marzouqi received his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Chemical Engineering in USA (B.Sc. from University of Washington in 1991 and Ph.D. from Oregon State University in 1997). He worked as an Instructor in the Chemical Engineering Department of Oregon State University for three years and then joined the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department of UAE University in September 2000. Prof. Al-Marzouqi has served as the Assistant Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Engineering for 12 years until he was appointed as the Vice Dean of the College of Graduate Studies in 2017, Acting Dean in 2018 and Dean of the College of Graduate Studies in 2019. His research focuses on CO2 capture, brine management, formulation and processing of biodegradable polymers, conversion of biomass to high value chemicals, the use of supercritical fluid technology in food and pharmaceutical applications, polymeric materials and biodiesel production. Prof. Al-Marzouqi has published 64 peer-reviewed journal papers, contributed to 80 conference presentations, and achieved six granted patents and two book chapters. He has supervised 9 Ph.D. and 11 M.Sc. theses. Among his many awards, Prof. Al-Marzouqi received the Prime Minister’s Medal for the Distinguished Innovator in 2022.

Dr. Ali Diabat received his B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology, Jordan in 1999, M.Sc. degree in Operations Research from North Carolina State University, USA in 2003, and his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, USA in 2008. In June 2008, he joined Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi as an Assistant Professor of Engineering Systems and Management, and due to his exceptional performance he was promoted to Associate Professor in June 2012, and to Full Professor in June 2016. Right after completing nine years at Masdar Institute, he joined New York University Abu Dhabi as a Global Network Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering.  Dr. Diabat’s research focuses on different applications of optimization and operations research: in particular, logistics and supply chain management, healthcare management, and production planning. Dr. Diabat has published over 100 research journal papers and over 30 conference papers in leading journals and international conference proceedings. Many of his publications are co-authored with his own graduate students and in many cases with national and international collaborators. Dr. Diabat’s research has received about 5 million dollars of grant funding from different industries and collaborative proposals with academic institutions. His industry experience includes working in the oil shipping industry in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. After that, he held a position as business analyst at United Airlines, and two positions as an operations research analyst in the banking and beverages industries, all in the United States. Dr. Diabat has received several excellence in teaching awards, including an Outstanding Graduate Instructor Award and an Excellence in Teaching Award from Purdue University, in 2004 and 2006, respectively. Dr. Diabat was the recipient of the 2012 Excellence in Teaching Award from Masdar Institute, an achievement of special significance as it was the first award of its kind offered at the Institute. In 2014, he also received the Best Faculty Research Award from the Department of Engineering Systems and Management at Masdar Institute. Dr. Diabat currently serves as an Associate Editor of the SME Journal of Manufacturing Systems (JMS) and as an Area Editor of the Journal of Computers and Industrial Engineering (C&IE), two of the leading journals in the field of Industrial Engineering published by Elsevier. He is a member of Mohammed Bin Rashid Academy of Scientists (MBRAS), a platform for the science community within the UAE that includes a selection of scientists and experts foreseeing the future of developments in the field of science and technology.

Ali Alnaser is professor and head of the Physics Department in the American University of Sharjah (AUS) –UAE. Prior to joining AUS, he worked as research fellow at Kansas State University in the US. Dr. Alnaser has been a visiting professor at Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Germany; King Saud University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; and the Advanced Laser Light Source in Canada. He has co-supervised the research work of master’s and PhD students in the US, Canada and Germany. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in leading science journals, such as those of Nature Publishing Group, American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics; and co-authored numerous papers at regional and international conferences. Dr. Alnaser serves as a member of the international advisory board, editor, and referee for journals published by the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics in UK, among many others.

Ali Almansoori is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Associate Provost for Education at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi. He holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering with highest distinction from Florida Institute of Technology, PhD in Chemical Engineering in the area of Process Systems Engineering from Imperial College London, and Executive MBA from London Business School. His specific research interests are in computer-aided modelling, optimization and simulation with applications to energy system design, sustainable operations and supply chain management. He has published over 80 journal articles (of which one appeared in the Science magazine), co-authored 6 book chapters, presented more than 40 conference papers in local and international conferences or workshops, and supervised over 20 graduate students. He was the principal investigators of more than 10 projects, which were sponsored by industry and academia. He is currently a research theme lead at KU Innovation Center on CO₂ and H₂ (RICH). He has received 10 awards due to the impact of his research in the scientific community, including the Mohammed Bin Rashid Medal for Scientific Excellence in 2019.

Ali Trabolsi is an Associate Professor and Program Head of Chemistry at New York University Abu Dhabi. He received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from the Lebanese University in Beirut (Lebanon). In 2002, he moved to Strasbourg (France), where he obtained an M.Sc. in Analytical Chemistry (2003) and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry (2006). He then joined the group of Sir J. Fraser Stoddart (2016 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry) as a postdoctoral scholar at UCLA (USA), where he spent one year before relocating with the Stoddart group to Northwestern University in Evanston (USA). From 2009 to 2011, he worked at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia as a research scientist in the Advanced Membranes and Porous Materials Center. In 2011, Professor Trabolsi joined New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) in the United Arab Emirates as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to tenured Associate Professor in September 2017. At NYUAD, Dr. Trabolsi's group pursues research in the areas of molecular topology, supramolecular chemistry, and materials chemistry for health and environmental applications. His publications include 87 peer-reviewed journal papers, 2 book chapters, and 3 US patents.

Professor Ammar Nayfeh was born in Urbana IL in 1979. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2001 in electrical engineering and his master's degree in 2003 from Stanford University. Dr. Nayfeh earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 2006. His research focused on heteroepitaxy of germanium on silicon for electronic and photonic devices. After his PhD, he joined Advanced Micro Devices as a researcher working in collaboration with IBM. After that he joined a silicon valley startup company, Innovative Silicon (ISi) in 2008. In addition, he was a part time professor at San Jose State University. In June 2010, he joined MIT as a visiting scholar and became a faculty member at the Masdar Institute currently Khalifa University. Professor Nayfeh is currently an associate professor in the Department Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at Khalifa University. Professor Ammar Nayfeh has authored or co-authored over 100 publications. Many of the publications are in top tier journals including, Nature, IOP Nanotechnology, IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, Applied Physics Letters, and Elsevier Solar Energy to name a few. In addition, he has continued to publish his work in top conferences worldwide including, IEEE nano, MRS, ECS, and PVSC. In addition to publications, he has filed three patents including one from the research in the UAE.  Dr. Nayfeh was instrumental in helping to establish the first state of the art clean room laboratory in the UAE at Khalifa University. Dr. Nayfeh’s research has also attracted significant amount of funding. He have been awarded approximately $1.2M dollars in external research grants. These grants are from Office of Naval Research Global, Masdar PV, and Twin Labs. Also, two years ago, his PhD Student Dr. Nazek El-Atab was awarded the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science fellowship. In addition to external, Dr. Nayfeh was awarded approximately $3M in internal funding including the Masdar-MIT flagship on advanced solar and a project on nano materials and low temperature Ge growth.  Dr Nayfeh recently put nanomaterials to good use in the fight against Covid-19. Using Si nanoparticles to model how the virus spreads in hospital environments in collaboration with Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi the novel study will help health care professionals better understand how the virus spreads.   Finally, with regards to student advising, since joining Khalifa University, Dr. Nayfeh has graduated 4 PhD and 11 MSc students including 5 UAE nationals. Dr. Nayfeh is a member of IEEE, MRS and Stanford Alumni Association. He has received the Material Research Society Graduate Student Award, the Robert C. Maclinche Scholarship at UIUC, and Stanford Graduate Fellowship. Dr. Nayfeh has also spent time visiting local schools in the UAE to help spark the next generation of scientists in the UAE as part of the science in residence initiative of the Mohammed bin Rashid Academy of Scientists (MBRAS)

Professor Andrea Macciò is interested in understanding the nature and origin of the mysterious dark components of our cosmos: dark energy and dark matter, which account for 95 percent of the total energy/matter budget of the universe. In order to achieve this goal, he studies the formation and evolution of galaxies in such a dark universe via large computer numerical simulations. Prof. Macciò obtained his PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Milan in 2004, and then he was a researcher at the University of Zurich till 2006, then a group leader with the Max Planck Society till 2015, before joining NYUAD. Since 2019 he is the Director of the Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics (CAP3) at NYUAD.

Integrated Master, (1985), University of Patras (UPAT), Greece. Ph.D. (1990), Electrical Engineering, The Ohio State University, USA. Assistant/Associate Professor (1990-99), Polytechnic University, NY, USA. Associate/Full Professor (1999-2016), ECE Department, UPAT, Greece. Professor and ECE Program Head (2017-current), NYUAD, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Dr. Abu-Jdayil is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the UAE University (UAEU). He is currently the head of the Engineering Requirements Unit and the coordinator of the Chemical engineering master program. Before joining the UAEU, Prof. Abu-Jdayil was an Associate Professor at University of Bahrain and at Jordan University of Science and Technology. He earned his Ph.D. in Fluid Mechanics from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 1996, his MSc in chemical engineering from the University of Jordan and his BSc in chemical engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology.
Abu-Jdayil’s research specialization is in the areas of rheology, composite materials, natural fibers, and green thermal insulators. His research has resulted in more than 95 journal papers, 2 book chapters, 3 international patents, and a lot of presentations in local and international conferences, which are frequently cited (h-index 30, citation 2800+, Google Scholar 2021). Prof. Abu-Jdayil has participated (PI/co-PI) in various national and international research projects funded by different institutions (UAE University, ADNOC, MUADALA, Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC), AURAK/UAE, ROC Engineering /UAE, The Higher Council for Science and Technology/Jordan, Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation/Jordan). He has supervised the thesis work of over 20 graduate students. Prof. Abu-Jdayil is a reviewer in many international journals and on the editorial board of “Geofluids”. He is the recipient of several prestigious research awards. Prof. Abu-Jdayil conducted many short courses in the training centres of leading industries in the Middle East like SABIC, GASCO, Emirates Steel Industries, OMIFCO and TAKREER.

Dr. Bassam is the Program Director of care model innovation at Dubai Health Authority, Assistant Dean at the College of Medicine, Sharjah University.  He is a graduate of U.A.E. University, Al Ain.  He is American board certified in (internal medicine, allergy and clinical immunology, and pulmonology) from university of Toronto.  He also has Masters in Business administration from Wolverhampton University. He is a Consultant Pulmonologist and the Head of Pulmonary Medicine, Rashid hospital under Dubai Health Authority, UAE.  He is also head of emirates allergy and respiratory society.  Besides, he holds the position of associate clinical professor, faculty of medicine, in Sharjah University and is the associate research fellow at Meakins Respiratory research centre, McGill University, Canada.    Dr. Mahboub’s areas of interest are health innovation and respiratory care, as well as translation research in airway diseases.   

Dr. Chowdhary is currently the Dean at the College of Food & Agriculture, UAE University. During the past 41+ years he has worked in various prestigious universities in India, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, USA, Qatar and UAE as a teacher, researcher and a senior administrator in research & graduate education. His primary research interests are in the field of animal genetics, specifically focusing on cytogenetics, comparative genomics, gene mapping, disease genetics, etc. He has published over 220 original research articles, books and reviews in prestigious international journals some of which represent groundbreaking work, and has received several million USD in funding from various highly competitive national and international research agencies around the world. He has won some prestigious recognitions for his research, like the Pfizer Award for Research Excellence, Distinguished Achievement Award for Research (TAMU) and University Faculty Fellow (AgriLife Research). He has served as the President of the Texas Genetics Society and is currently Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M, University, USA. His passion is to advance, organize and promote education and research in Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine and strengthen awareness on global food security.

Cesare Stefanini received the M.Sc. degree in mechanical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Microengineering, both with honours, from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy, in 1997 and 2002. He has been visiting researcher at the University of Stanford. He is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and the Director of the Healthcare Engineering Innovation Center at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi.

Professor David Holland graduated from Memorial University of Newfoundland with a B.Sc. in Physics and a B.A. in Mathematics in 1985. His graduate studies included a M.Sc. in Physical Oceanography in 1987 and a Ph.D. in Atmosphere-Ocean Science from McGill University in 1993. Since 1998 he has been a faculty member of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Science at New York University (NYU), becoming a full professor in 2008. His research focuses on understanding mechanisms by which significant sea level change could arise from the great ice sheets, Greenland and Antarctica, over the coming decades. He applies advanced applied mathematical techniques to data collected in remote environments. A veteran of 10 years of Greenland and Antarctic field expeditions, Professor Holland continues to spend summers collecting vital information about the state of the glaciers in those regions. This data analysis is used in improving computer modeling of the interaction of the great ice sheets with warming global ocean waters leading to more robust projections of global sea level change. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles on polar environmental science. He was awarded an NSF Career Award in 2000. He served as Director of the Center for Atmosphere-Ocean Science in the Courant Institute during 2008-2013 and since 2013 he has become the Director of the Center for Sea Level Change at NYU New York and Abu Dhabi. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles on polar environmental science. He was awarded an NSF Career Award in 2000. He served as Director of the Center for Atmosphere-Ocean Science in the Courant Institute during 2008-2013 and since 2013 he has become the Director of the Center for Sea Level Change at NYU New York and Abu Dhabi.

Associate Professor of Physics Dave Russell is the current Head of the Physics Program at NYUAD. He is also PI of the Galaxy Components Cluster in the Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics (CAP3) at NYUAD. He has a BSc and MSc from the University of Hertfordshire, UK, and a PhD from the University of Southampton, UK. Previously he was a Veni Fellow at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and a Marie Curie IEF Fellow based at the Instituto de Astrofı́sica de Canarias (IAC), Tenerife, Spain.

Dipesh Chaudhury is a faculty at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). A native of Malaysia who had spent his formative years in the UK, Dipesh is a neuroscientist who received his BSc in Toxicology and Pharmacology from the London School of Pharmacy, University of London (UK) and PhD in Neuroscience from the Open University (UK). He held various post-doctoral positions in the US (UCLA, Cornell and Mount Sinai Medical School) and France (CNRS) before starting his own lab at NYUAD where his group is one of the few in the GCC investigating the connection between sleep-wake cycle and mood disorders. To answer these questions, his group use a multidisciplinary approach combining rodent (behavioural) models of stress/depression, in-vitro / in-vivo electrophysiology, in-vitro / in-vivo imaging, viral tracing and optogenetics to systematically investigate cellular processes in neural circuits of the rodent brain connecting sleep-wake centers to regions that regulate mood. Additionally, his lab uses state of the art molecular assays to investigate changes in the genome profiles of these circuits, which will enable his group to elucidate the molecular basis of sleep disruption and mood disorders. They have published work that suggests abnormal sleep patterns may be predictive of vulnerability to stress. These findings are highly exciting as it may lead to the development of clinical applications where sleep patterns may be used to screen people who may be exposed to high stress job situations (1st responders, soldiers etc). By having simple non-invasive markers of stress susceptibility, such as sleep patterns, it may be possible to develop strategies to protect vulnerable people. Dipesh’s group have also shown mice that are susceptible to stress do not adapt to jet-lag as well as mice that are resilient to stress. Their research is highly relevant to the UAE since night-time exposure to artificial light, shift work, and regular travel across time zones that disrupts sleep-wake cycles can have negative consequences on health. Moreover, sleep and mood disorders are increasing in the UAE because of its comorbidities with other diseases that are prevalent within the local Emirati community such as multiple sclerosis and diabetes. Thus, having a better understanding the neurobiological cause and consequences of sleep-wake disruptions has critical regional health implications. 

Dr. Ehab F. El-Saadany is an IEEE Fellow for his contributions in distributed generation planning, operation and control. He was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1964. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, in 1986 and 1990, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 1998, where he was a Professor with the ECE Department till 2019, where he was the Director of the Power MEng program between 2010 and 2015. Currently, he is a Professor of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Director of the Advanced Power and Energy Research Center (APEC) at Khalifa University, UAE. Dr. El-Saadany is an Internationally recognized expert in the area of sustainable energy integration and smart distribution systems. His research interests include smart grid operation and control, microgrids, self-healing, cyber-physical security of smart grids, protection, power quality, embedded generation and transportation electrification. He is an Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, and IEEE Power Systems Letters. He is Registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario. Dr. El-Sadaany has graduated 30 Ph.D. and 22 M.Sc. students and published 450+ international journal and conference papers in addition to 3 US patents. He is an internationally recognized expert in Distribution Systems with Scopus H-Index 64 and over 17,000 citations. Dr. El-Saadany is a two-time recipient of Canada Research Chair Award in Energy Systems (2009-2014) and Smart Distribution Systems (2014-2018). Recipient of the Mission Innovation Champion award in 2020 and is the recipient of the prestigious Khalifa Award in 2021

Dr. Enas M. Nashef is a Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Khalifa University since 2014. Before joining KU, he worked at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from 2004-2014 as Assistant Professor after obtaining his PhD from the University of South Carolina (USA) in 2004. He was promoted to Associate Professor and Professor in 2011 and 2019, respectively. He is very active in research related to green engineering and sustainability and established collaboration with several Universities. He has co-authored more than 140 peer-reviewed journal publications. In addition, he received nine patents from the US and EU patent offices. He is also a recipient of several prestigious awards including King Abdullah Award for best invention in 2013.

Dr. Adeghate received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Semmelweis University Medical School, Budapest, Hungary and his PhD from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary. He is Professor and Chair of Anatomy at the College of Medicine & Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. His research interest is in the field of diabetes mellitus. He has published more than 200 full-length articles in peer-reviewed journals, 1 book, 9 book chapters, 120 abstracts, and attended over 85 scientific conferences. Dr. Adeghate has an h-index of 40, i10-index of 139, with a total citation of 6,704. Dr. Adeghate is currently ranked among the World’s top 2% Scientists by Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA in 2020. He is currently the Editor in Chief of the Open Medicinal Chemistry Journal

Dr. Ernesto Damiani is the Senior Director of Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute at Khalifa University. He is also a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department and Director of the Khalifa University Center for Cyber Physical Systems (C2PS). Dr. Damiani is the Chair of the Information Security Program and a Research Professor in EBTIC. He is on extended leave from the Department of Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy, where he leads the SESAR research lab. He is also the President of the Italian Consortium of Computer Science Universities (CINI). Ernesto’s research interests include secure service-oriented architectures, privacy-preserving Big Data analytics and Cyber-Physical Systems security. Dr. Damiani holds and has held visiting positions at a number of international institutions, including George Mason University in Virginia, US; Tokyo Denki University, Japan; LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia; and the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) at Lyon, France. He is a Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Progress of Science. He has been Principal Investigator in a number of large-scale research projects funded by the European Commission in the context of the Seventh Framework Program and Horizon 2020, the Italian Ministry of Research, and by private companies such as British Telecom, Cisco Systems, SAP, Telecom Italia, Siemens Networks (now Nokia Siemens) and many others. Dr. Damiani serves in the editorial board of several international journals; among others, he is the EIC of the International Journal on Big Data and of the International Journal of Knowledge and Learning. He is Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Service Computing and of the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems. He is also a senior member of the IEEE and served as Vice-Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Industrial Informatics. In 2008, Ernesto was nominated IEEE Senior Member and ACM Distinguished Scientist and received the Chester Sall Award from the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. Ernesto Damiani’s work has more than 16,100 citations on Google Scholar and more than 6,300 citations on Scopus, with an h-index of 34. With 494 publications listed on DBLP, he is considered among the most prolific European computer scientists.

Dr. Fadi Aloul is a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and the Dean of Engineering at the American University of Sharjah (AUS), UAE. He holds a PhD and MS degrees in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, respectively, and a BS degree in Electrical Engineering summa cum laude from Lawrence Technological University, Michigan, USA. His research and industrial interests are in Cyber Security, Mobile Applications, Innovative Education, and Design Optimization. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and the founder of several cyber security awareness initiatives in UAE including UAE’s Cyber Academy.
Dr. Aloul received a number of prestigious awards including being the only recipient from the Middle East to receive the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC) Airbus Engineering Diversity Award in addition to the H.H. Sheikh Khalifa, UAE’s President, Award for Higher Education, the Sheikh Rashid's Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement, the Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Young Arab Researchers, the AUS Excellence in Teaching Award and the Semiconductor Research Corporation Fellowship. He has 125+ publications (available at http://www.aloul.net) and 1 US patent. He is a regular invited speaker and panellist across a number of international conferences related to Cyber Security, Technology, Innovation and Education.

Prof. Falah Hasoon is a former senior scientist at NREL and a research professor at Colorado School of Mines. For more than 25 years, Dr. Hasoon has actively researched material growth and characterization of photovoltaic materials and device processing. He has a master’s degree in physics from the University of Bath and his doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Salford. He is an author and co-author of more than 120 scientific research publications and is a co-inventor of four U.S. patents. Dr. Hasoon’s knowledge covers a wide range of material growth techniques such as the vertical Bridgeman method, the iodine vapor transport technique, the solution growth method, physical vapor deposition, and closed space sublimation.

Fathalla Rihan is currently professor of mathematics at the United Arab Emirates University (UAE). He was awarded his BSc in mathematics from the Faculty of Science, Alexandria University, in 1986. He received his PhD in 2000 from the School of Mathematics, The University of Manchester (UK), in “Numerical Treatment of Delay Differential Equations in Biosciences” and completed his Doctor of Science Degree (DSc) from National University of Uzbekistan, in the field of “Features of Delay Differential Equations and Their Application.” His research interests include numerical analysis; mathematical biology, mathematical modeling of real-life phenomena with memory (cell division, population dynamics, and infectious diseases, neural networks), parameter estimation, sensitivity analysis; and qualitative and quantitative analysis of delay differential equations. He has published a considerable number of research articles in highly impacted journals and has participated in more than 100 international conferences. Over the course of his career, Prof. Rihan has worked in different institutes, including Manchester University (UK) and Salford University (UK). In addition, he is on the editorial board of many international journals and a reviewer for American Mathematical Society. He has supervised many PhD students and is a principal investigator of many research projects in the field of mathematical biology. Prof. Rihan was among the top 2% of researchers classified by Stanford University for 2019–2020. He has more than 30 years of experience in teaching mathematics to undergraduate and graduate students. He is also an expert in quality assurance and accreditation of higher education institutes.

• Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery, Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland
• PhD, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
• Membership of Royal College of Physicians of Ireland
• Membership of Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland
• Membership of National University of Ireland
• Fellowship of Faculty of Public Health (UK)
• Fellowship of American College of Physicians

Fawzi Banat is a professor and currently chair of chemical engineering at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE. He received his PhD in chemical engineering from McGill University (Canada) in 1995. His research interests include membrane separation processes, food packaging, algal biotechnology, and wastewater treatment. Dr. Banat is the author/co-author of more than 350 peer-reviewed journal articles, five patents, and nine book chapters, and has participated in more than 150 conferences. He recently co-edited a book on algal biotechnology (Elsevier). He has participated in several national and international projects (PI /co- PI) funded by different institutions and is a member of the editorial board of several journals. Prof. Banat has been listed among World's Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University (2020, 2021). He has been bestowed with numerous awards by various academic, industrial, and professional bodies such as Khalifa Award for Education (Distinguished University Professor in the Field of Scientific Research) and Shoman Prize for Young Researchers.  He has held several administrative positions at various universities, including department head, dean of research, and dean of graduate studies.

Francesco Arneodo is an experimental physicist, his main interest is subatomic particle detection, with applications in astrophysics, particle physics and cultural heritage. He did his Master's in Physics at the University of Torino, Italy, and obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Rome La Sapienza, after three years of experimental work on cosmic rays and gamma-ray astronomy at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS), Italy. In 2011, being interested also in socio-economic aspects of science, he obtained an MBA degree from the University of Warwick (UK). From 1997 to 2013, he worked at the LNGS, first on liquid argon detectors for neutrino physics, and later on liquid xenon technology for the search of Dark Matter. In 2013 he moved to New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) as visiting faculty. He was tenured as associate professor one year later, and became Professor of Physics in September 2019. He has been chair of the NYUAD Physics Program from 2014 to 2016, and since September 2016 he took the role of Associate Dean of Science. He is part of the Faculty Council of the Gran Sasso Science Institute, a doctoral school in L’Aquila, Italy (that he contributed to create). At NYUAD he established an astro-particle experimental group. One of the main activities of the group is the participation in the XENON programme, an international collaboration that, as of 2019, spans across 11 countries with more than 150 scientists. Between 2004-2018, the XENON Collaboration built and operated three liquid xenon detectors. At the time of their respective operation, each detector was the world’s most sensitive in the search for WIMP-like dark matter, a well established model of dark matter particles. Prof. Arneodo has several active collaborations with institutions in the UAE and abroad, such as the the UAE Space Agency, the Mohammed Bib Rashid Space Center, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Italian Space Agency, the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), and CERN. He is co-author of more than 130 publications in international, peer-reviewed journals.

Gennaro Esposito was born in 1953 in Naples where he completed his university studies and graduated with honors in Chemistry in 1979. From 1980 to 1982, he continued the collaboration with the NMR spectroscopy laboratory of the University of Naples while being chemistry teacher in secondary schools. From September 1982 to January 1990 he was a NMR researcher in industrial laboratories of the ENI group (Assoreni and Eniricerche, Monterotondo, Rome). In February 1990 he moved to Udine University, first as a Biophysics Permanent Researcher and then, from September 2000 to August 2018, as Associate Professor of Applied Physics. From September 2018 he moved to NYUAD, in the current position of Visiting Professor of Chemistry. Gennaro Esposito carried out scientific research activities in many international laboratories as Research Assistant (Oxford, London, Lausanne) or Visiting Professor (Grenoble, Osaka, Abu Dhabi).  Scientific production: ~ 165 publications (> 100 as first, second or last author) H-index = 42, ~ 5400 citations. National and international funding: 18 projects for 1.3 million euros.

Ghaleb Husseini graduated with Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in 1995 and 1997, respectively, from Brigham Young University, where he also finished his doctoral research in chemical engineering with an emphasis in biomedical engineering in 2001. In January 2004, he was appointed as an assistant professor in chemical engineering at AUS, where he was promoted to associate professor and professor in 2008 and 2013, respectively. He served as the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research in the AUS College of Engineering for two years starting May 2017. He works in the area of ultrasonic drug delivery. He has 200 academic publications, two patents (2 more filed) and five book chapters, and is cited over 4900 times. According to Google Scholar, he holds an h-index & i10-index of 36 and 68, respectively. He secured funding from the Patient’s Friends Committee-Sharjah, AlJalila Foundation, Al Qasimi Foundation, the Technology Innovation Pioneer-Healthcare (TIP) Program, Takamul, Sheikh Hamdan Award for Medical Sciences, Friends of Cancer Patients, the Ameera Fund and the Dana Gas Endowed Chair for Chemical Engineering. Dr. Husseini held the distinguished lecturer position at IEEE-EMBS (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society) Jan 2014- Dec 2015. His project entitled "Nanocarriers and Ultrasound in Cancer Treatment" was highly commended as the Institute of Chemical Engineers (ICHEME) Research Project of the Year - ICHEME Global Awards 2016, and was shortlisted again in the Pharma Category in the ICHEME Global Awards 2018. In May 2018, he won the TIP (Technology Innovation Pioneer) Health Care Award. Ghaleb has been appointed as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience May 2020. He is also serving on the editorial board of the International Review of Applied Sciences and Engineering (IRASE) and served on the editorial board of the European Journal of Nanomedicine 2016-2018. Dr. Husseini spent a sabbatical at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, working in Dr. Jeffrey A. Hubbell's laboratory and is currently serving as the Dana Gas Endowed Chair for Chemical Engineering.  

Giovanni Palmisano graduated with a PhD in Chemical and Materials Engineering from the University of Palermo in 2009. He has been hired from Masdar Institute which later merged into Khalifa University and he is currently an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, working mostly in the field of photocatalysis. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and advised graduate students regularly. He has been the recipient of the ADEK Award for Research Excellence multiple times, and of the 2018 Faculty Research Excellence Award granted by Khalifa University for the category “Associate Professor” of the College of Engineering. His research activities are focused on photocatalysis applied to water, environment, materials functionalization, and energy. He is the co-author of ca. 130 highly cited journal papers, seven patents, six books and nine book chapters. In 2020 he has been appointed as associate editor of the well renowned Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering.

Gulfaraz Khan is professor of viral pathology and former Chair of the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University. He received his undergraduate and postgraduate training in London (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College). He did his postdoctoral training in the Laboratory of the late Prof David Thorley-Lawson at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, followed by senior postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory of Prof Ruth Jarrett at LRF Virus Centre, University of Glasgow, UK. He is Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (UK) and has held faculty positions in universities in UK before moving to his current post in UAE. He has extensive experience in teaching and supervising undergraduate and post graduate students. In recognition of his teaching, he received the UAEU College of Medicine and Health Sciences Teaching Award on two separate occasions (2013 & 2017).

MSc (1975-Biochemistry, University of Lucknow, India), PhD (1980, Kanpur University, India, Chemistry/Toxicology- Degree evaluated and accredited by the USA World Accrediting Agency). More than ten years of Post-Doc/work experience on NIH (National Institute of Health, USA) fellowships at reputed universities and medical schools/cancer center in the USA (Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio; USA). I have 30+ years of teaching (Biochemistry and Toxicology) experience to UG/graduate (MSc/PhD) and medical (MD/MBBS) students. Extensive research in the field of Biochemistry, Toxicology, Molecular Pharmacology, Drug metabolism, Oxidative stress and Mitochondrial dysfunction in Diabetes and Cancer. My main research area is in the field of Biomedical Health Sciences. I have published more than 100 peer reviewed research articles in highly reputed (majority in Q1 and top 5%-10%) international journals (Google Scholar h-index 40 with 5500+ citations; Scopus h-index 35, 3500+ citations), book chapters and 75+ international scientific conference presentations. I have supervised research projects/theses for numerous MSc and PhD students enrolled in Biomedical Sciences degree programs. I am cited as top 2% scientists ranked globally in a recent study (2019/20) by Stanford University, USA. I also review scientific papers submitted by international scientists in numerous high impact peer reviewed journals. I have held numerous Visiting Scientist/Scholar appointments at prestigious universities and research centers in Europe and USA (National Center for Toxicology Research (USA-FDA), Jefferson, AR; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA; Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands). I have 30+ years of work experience at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAEU. I have received Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Awards for Medical Sciences (2016 and 2020) for publishing best research papers from their grants awarded to me. I have served as the chair of the Department of Biochemistry, CMHS, for eight years until 2019. I also serve/have served in numerous senior level committees (chair, director or member) at the college and university levels.

Prof. Arafat is the director of the Center for Membranes and Advanced Water Technology (CMAT) and professor of chemical engineering at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where he is working since 2010. Prof. Arafat received a Ph.D. and BSc in Chemical Engineering from the Univ. of Cincinnati (USA) (2000) and the Univ. of Jordan (1996), respectively. From 2000 to 2003, he worked at Argonne National Laboratory (USA) on separation processes development for nuclear waste treatment. Between 2003 and 2010, he was a faculty member of the Chem. Eng. Dept. at An-Najah University (Palestinian Territory). Between 2009 and 2012, he served as an adjunct associate professor of the Biological Eng. Dept. at Utah State Univ. (USA) and in 2010, he spent six months as a visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA). He is a recipient of several prestigious research fellowships by the US National Academy of Science (USA), the Open Society Foundation (USA) and DAAD (Germany). Through his career thus far, he supervised 58 postdoctoral fellows and graduate students and received 29 research grants, totaling more than $16M. His research was published in 270+ book chapters, journal papers, and conference presentations, in addition to two US patents. He was invited to deliver 60 keynote and invited talks worldwide. Among other honors, Prof. Arafat received the Khalifa Award for Education, presented by the President of UAE, the Mohammad Bin Rashid Medal for Scientific Excellence, presented by the Prime Minister of UAE, the United States Department of Energy Secretarial Honor Award, the Mondialogo Engineering Award by Daimler AG and UNESCO, and the Univ. of Cincinnati Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship. He is a member of the selection committees of the prestigious Zayed Sustainability Prize and the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Water Award. In 2021, he was granted the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Citizenship by nomination of the UAE’s Prime Minister Office in recognition of his accomplishments and service to the UAE.

Dr. Hatem Zeineldin received his Bachelor's and Master's degree in Electrical Power and Machines from Cairo University in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2006 from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of Waterloo. In 2006, he joined Smith and Andersen Electrical Inc. as an electrical engineer where he was involved in several projects related to distributed generation. During that period, Dr. Zeineldin was also hired as a research consultant for a research project that was funded by Natural Resources Canada that focused on protection planning with renewable energy sources. In 2007, Dr. Zeineldin worked as a visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he focused on developing new methods for islanding detection of renewable energy sources.

In 2007, Dr. Zeineldin joined Masdar Institute and served as the Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Dr. Zeineldin is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Khalifa University.  Dr. Zeineldin is currently an editor of the IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion. 

Hichem Eleuch is Professor of Physics at University of Sharjah, UAE. He received his Diplom-Ingenieur Univ. (Electrical and Information Engineering) from Technical University of Munich in 1995. He obtained his PhD in Quantum Physics from Kastler Brossel Laboratory at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris (ENS) and Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (Sorbonne University), Paris, France in 1998.
He has worked at and visited several prestigious universities and research institutes including Texas A&M University, Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Princeton University, McGill University, Auckland University, University of Montreal.
Prof. Eleuch has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed international journals and holds 2 US patents. He has participated in over 70 international conferences and given more than 40 invited talks. He has refereed articles for more than 50 journals of physics (Nature Communications, Scientific Reports, Physical Review Letters, etc.) and Mathematics (Applied Mathematics and Computation, Journal of Mathematical Physics, etc.). He also reviewed work for MITACS (Canadian Funding Agency). He has successfully supervised and graduated more than 15 (PhD and MSc) students and also monitored several Postdoctoral Fellows.
He has been awarded several fellowships (from the Fulbright Foundation, Max Planck Society, and the International Center of Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy). He is also a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Ghedira is the Director of Research Engagement at Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi. He was the Director of the Research Center for Renewable Energy Mapping and Assessment at Masdar Institute from 2011 to 2020. Dr. Ghedira received his MSc degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Sherbrooke (Canada) and his PhD in Water Sciences from the University of Quebec (Canada) in 1997 and 2001, respectively. Before moving to the UAE, Dr. Ghedira spent six years at the City University of New York as assistant professor and research associate professor. He also acted as director of the Environmental Remote Sensing and Image Processing Laboratory at the NOAA Cooperative Remote Sensing Science & Technology Center (NOAA-CREST) in New York from 2003 to 2008. Dr. Ghedira has played a leading role in establishing Masdar Institute as regional research hub for adaptation of earth observation technologies for environmental monitoring and atmospheric modelling in desert and arid environments. He is an active member in several regional and international working groups in the field of clean energy, space technologies and water resource management. He has authored and co-authored more than 140 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals and referred conference proceedings. He has also supervised more than twenty PhD and MSc theses in the US and the UAE. Dr. Ghedira was nominated in January 2019 by Solar Quarter Magazine in the list of Most Influential Solar Business Leaders in The MENA PV Market.

HUSSAIN SHAREEF is currently a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, United Arab Emirates University and the head of the Green Mobility research team at Emirates Center for Mobility Research. His domains of research are related with power system planning, integration of renewable power sources, application of AI techniques in power system, energy management, power quality and electric vehicle grid integration. Dr. Shareef appeared as World’s Top 2% scientist by Stanford University in 2020. Among his many awards, Dr. Shareef is a 2019-2020 recipient of UAE University Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Chancellor Innovation Award 2020-2021. Since he received his Ph.D. degree from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Malaysia, in 2007, he has published more than 400 peer-reviewed journal papers in various fields related to power and energy systems. He has more than 4200 citations with an h-index of 37. Dr. Shareef is a member of Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

Dr. Jamal A. Abdalla is a professor of Civil Engineering (Structural Engineering) and Riad Sadek Endowed Chair at the American University of Sharjah (AUS). Dr. Jamal Abdalla is a recipient of several excellences and research awards including the Arab Fund Distinguished Scholar Fellowship Award and the ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering Best Paper Award. Recently, he has been elected as Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Dr. Jamal Abdalla received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Khartoum, Sudan, earned his master's from Purdue University, USA and his Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley, USA, followed by Postdoctoral Research Affiliate at the Center for Integrated Facility Engineering of Stanford University, USA. He worked as senior software and structural engineer at PMB Engineering, a subsidiary of Bechtel Civil Inc., San Francisco, USA. Dr. Jamal Abdalla taught at the University of Khartoum and at Qatar University prior to joining the American University of Sharjah. His teaching interest spans a wide range of structural engineering topics including structural dynamics, structural analysis and steel and concrete design. His research interest covers computing and machine learning in structural engineering, seismic hazard assessment, earthquake engineering, strengthening/retrofitting of structures and sustainable building materials. Throughout his academic career, he has delivered keynote presentations, gave seminars, organized conferences and workshops and served on numerous conferences' technical committees. Dr. Jamal Abdalla served as an expert witness and as a consultant for many notable and landmark buildings and engineering projects in USA, Sudan, Qatar and UAE.

Author of over 200 publications, including refereed journal articles, conference proceedings, and technical reports, Dr. Jamal Abdalla served as an Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, Guest Editor of the Journal of The Franklin Institute and currently member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Computers & Concrete. A member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (ISCCBE) since 2002, Dr. Jamal Abdalla is among the pioneers in data modeling in structural engineering, he recently spent a sabbatical leave at Stanford University working on Building Information Modeling (BIM).

As head of the civil engineering department for nine years at the AUS, Dr. Jamal Abdalla successfully led the department though its first and second ABET accreditation and through two UAE Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (CAA) accreditations. As Director of Graduate Programs, Dr. Jamal Abdalla led the accreditation and licensing of five Masters of Science programs at the College of Engineering at AUS. Dr. Jamal Abdalla has been serving as civil engineering program evaluator (PEV) for ABET accreditation and had evaluated several civil engineering and technology programs in USA.

John A. Burt is an Associate Professor of Biology and Head of the Environmental Studies Program at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). As a marine biologist with over a decade of experience working on marine systems across Arabia, Burt leads the NYUAD Marine Biology Lab where his research focuses on understanding how marine organisms such as corals, fishes, seagrass and mangroves respond to and cope with extreme environmental conditions, and how this can help understand future climate change impacts. He is the Chair of the Middle East chapter of the International Coral Reef Society, and in this role seeks to raise global awareness of the unique nature of reefs across the Arabian region. Burt is also a co-Principal Investigator in the NYUAD Water Research Center, and he is an Investigator in the NYUAD CITIES Center. Burt has published over 100 scholarly articles and book chapters focused on marine systems of the UAE and surrounding nations, including in world-class journals such as Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Climate Change and others. Burt has a long history of engaging the local public in marine science, and was awarded the 2017 Sheikh Mubarak Bin Mohammed Al Nahyan Award for Natural History of the United Arab Emirates.

Ph.D., Chemical Environmental Engineering, University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), 2006

MEng, Chemical Engineering, University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), 2001

BEng, Chemical Engineering, University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), 2001

Prof. Assaleh earned a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in 1993, an M.S. in Electronic Engineering from Monmouth University, New Jersey in 1990, and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Jordan in 1988. Prof. Assaleh joined Ajman University (AU) in July 2017 as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. In this capacity, he oversees the academic operations of the university colleges, the Deanship of Students Services, the Deanship of Research and Graduate Studies, the Center for Continuing Education and Enterprises, the Office of International Academic Affairs, the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC), University Library and the Office of Admissions and Registration.

Before joining AU, Prof. Assaleh was a member of the senior administration at the American University of Sharjah (AUS) responsible for research and graduate studies where he served as interim Vice Provost from 2014 to June 2017 and Director of Graduate Studies from 2011 to 2014. He was also a professor at the department of electrical engineering where he taught courses in the areas of signal processing and Artificial Intelligence. His research interests include Artificial Intelligence, bio-signal processing, biometrics, speech recognition and image processing. Prior to joining AUS, Prof. Assaleh worked as a Research Professor at the CAIP Center of Rutgers University, New Jersey from 1993 to 1994. He then had a career in industry in the USA from 1994 through 2002 as a Senior Staff Engineer with Motorola in Phoenix, Arizona, and as an Engineering Group Leader with Rockwell Semiconductor Systems (Conexant/Skyworks) in Newport Beach, California.

Dr. Khaled Salah is a full professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Khalifa University, UAE. He received his B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from Iowa State University, USA, in 1990; his M.Sc. degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, USA, in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the same institution in 2000. He joined Khalifa University in August 2010, and is teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in the areas of cloud computing, computer and network security, computer networks, operating systems, and performance modeling and analysis.

Dr. Salah has over 190 publications and three US patents. He has been giving a number of international keynote speeches, invited talks, tutorials, and research seminars on the subjects of Blockchain, IoT, Fog and Cloud Computing, and Cybersecurity. Dr. Salah was the recipient of the Khalifa University Outstanding Research Award 2014/2015, KFUPM University Excellence in Research Award of 2008/09, and KFUPM Best Research Project Award of 2009/10, as well as the recipient of the departmental awards for Distinguished Research and Teaching in prior years.

Dr. Salah is the chair of the Track Chair of IEEE Globecom 2018 on Cloud Computing. He is also an Associate Editor of IEEE Blockchain Tech Briefs, International Journal of “Blockchain in Healthcare”, and a member of the IEEE Blockchain Education Committee.

Prof. Khaled Shaalan awarded PhD in Computer Science, “Software Development Environment Based on Object Oriented and Logic Programming Paradigms”, under Joint channel supervision system between Cairo University, Egypt and Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden. He is a professor of Computer Science specialized in the area of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing. He has been Ranked among the top 2% influential scholars Worldwide in ‎‎2020 and 2021, which depicts the 100,000 top-scientists in ‎the world, according to a study led by Dr Ioannidis and his ‎research team in Stanford University: ‎https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000918). He has been ranked by Research.com as one of the top scientists worldwide
Acted as PI & Co-PI of eight funded projects to lead a diversity of funded international and national research projects in machine translation, named entity recognition, information retrieval, parsing, intelligent language tutoring systems, health informatics, and expert systems. International collaborators and external organisations are involved. He has published over 260 referred publications with high impact as indicated by his H-index metric. Most of his international journal publications appeared in top journals with high  Web of Science-JIF & SCOPUS-SJR Journal metrics.  He supervised 99 Postgraduate students to completion: 78 MSc. & 21 PhD students.
He acted as external evaluator for academic Promotion: 45 promotion reviews from 24 Universities; 24 to the rank of Associate Professor and 21 to the rank of Full Professor.
He also acted as external examiner for assessing 25 PhD theses for different universities worldwide.
Prof Khaled has been actively and extensively supporting the local and international academic community. He is a Chairman and founder of international conferences, including ACLing and ICETIS conferences 
He is a member of the journal editorial board including TALLIP, AKCE, and TEM Journal. Besides to special issues and edited books.
He has been invited to deliver Keynote Speech to several international conferences and events.
He is the Head of the informatics department that offer ‎Programmes of PhD in ‎Computer Science, MSc in ‎Informatics, and BSc in ‎Computer Science (Artificial ‎Intelligence, Software ‎Engineering).‎

Kourosh Salehi-Ashtiani received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University under the mentorship of Prof. Erwin Goldberg in Cell and Molecular Biology. He joined Prof. Jack Szostak’s group at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital for his postdoctoral work, where he used directed evolution to study RNA catalysis. He subsequently moved to the Center for Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB) at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, as a Group Leader. He developed several high throughput platforms for experimental interrogation of coding and metabolic potentials of humans and the model green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Salehi-Ashtiani joined New York University Abu Dhabi in 2011 as an Associate Professor of Biology and served as the Managing Director of NYUAD Center for Genomics and Systems Biology (CGSB) until 2017. His group at NYU Abu Dhabi explores fundamental and applied questions on algae and other organisms through genomics, systems, and synthetic biology.

Kyriaki Polychronopoulou is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Khalifa University of Science and Technology (UAE), and Visiting Professor at ETH-Zurich (Switzerland). She is also the director of the Center for Catalysis and Separations (CeCaS) at Khalifa University, the first center of its kind in the UAE, established in 2018. She holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Cyprus (2005). Before her appointment at Khalifa University she was Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University (IL, USA) and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (IL, USA). While at Khalifa University, she has received many awards and distinctions for her teaching and research contributions, such as Belt and Road Scholarship for International Talents (China), KU Faculty Teaching Excellence Award 2018, KU Certificate of Commendation 2018 for Faculty Research Excellence, KU Faculty Excellence Award 2015 for Outstanding Research, Advanced Award for Research Excellence (AARE) in three consecutive years 2019, 2017, 2015 from Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK). Other distinctions include her shortlisting for the Women in Science L’oreal-Unesco Award 2021, the Fulbright Scholarship for Advanced Research in the USA (2007), and the British Council Scholarship (2009).

Lakmal Seneviratne is Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the founding Director of the Khalifa University Centre for Autonomous Robotic Systems at Khalifa University, UAE. He is also the Technical Director of the Mohammed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC). Prior to joining Khalifa University he was Professor of Mechatronics, the founding Director of the Centre for Robotics Research and the Head of the Division of Engineering, at King’s College London. 

Professor Linda Zou received her Bachelor of Engineering degree from Beijing University of Technology in 1987, Masters degree in Asian Institute of Technology in 1991 and PhD degree from Monash University in Australia in 1998. She has worked as faculty in Australian universities since 1999 and was promoted to the Research Professor at the University of South Australia in 2010. Dr Linda Zou has published numerous journal articles (SCOPUS h-index 52). Prof Zou is in the 2019 Stanford University’s List of World’s Top 2% of Scientists in both Career-long and single-year (2019) rankings with the greatest citation impact. She has graduated 15 PhD students as the main advisor, and currently supervises 4 PhD students. In 2019, she is among the first 20 recipients of the UAE Government's Golden Residence program for scientific excellence. Dr Linda Zou joined Khalifa University in October 2014.

Ling Shao is the Founding CEO and Chief Scientist of the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IIAI), which has made a step change to the UAE’s research landscape in AI and become internationally recognized. He was also the initiator and a key founding member of the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (the world’s first AI university), for which he served as the Founding Provost and Executive Vice President (2019-2021). He received his B.Eng. degree in Electronic and Information Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), his M.Sc. degree in Medical Image Analysis and his Ph.D. (D.Phil.) degree in Computer Vision from the University of Oxford. Previously, He was a Chief Scientist and a Technology VP (2017-2018) of JD.com, Chair Professor (2016-2018) in Computer Vision and Machine Learning and Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory with the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, Chair Professor (2014-2016) in Computer Vision and Machine Intelligence and Head of the Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence Group with Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, a Senior Lecturer (2009-2014) with the University of Sheffield, UK and a Senior Scientist (2005-2009) with Philips Research, The Netherlands. His research interests include Computer Vision, Deep Learning/Machine Learning, Medical Imaging, and Vision and Language. He has authored/co-authored over 400 papers in top conferences/journals such as ICCV, CVPR, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICML, TPAMI and IJCV and over 20 EU/US patents.

Ling Shao served as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, and several other journals. He has edited four books and several special issues for journals such as IJCV and Pattern Recognition. He was the General Chair for BMVC 2018, has been an Area Chair or Program Committee member for many conferences, including ICCV, CVPR, ECCV and ACM MM, and a reviewer for many leading journals. He was selected as a ‘Highly Cited Researcher’ by the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) in 2018/2019/2020. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the IAPR, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Fellow of the IET, and a Life Member of the ACM.

Prof. Lourdes F. Vega is a Full Professor in Chemical Engineering and Director of the Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and hydrogen (RICH Center) at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). She has developed her career between academia and industry, with academic positions in the USA, Spain and the UAE. On the industrial side, she was the General Director of MATGAS, R&D Director of Carburos Metálicos, Technology Director of Air Products and Chemicals and Founder and CEO of Alya Technology & Innovation (Alyatech).

In addition to her role at Khalifa University, she is an Independent Member of the Board of Directors of the companies ERCROS, SA, and Canal de Isabel II, SA, in Spain. She also serves as the Coordinator of the Scientific Committee designing the strategic plan for the newly created National Center for Research in Energy Storage, (Cáceres, Spain), as well as a Member of the Scientific Board of the EPSRC "Frontier Engineering" Centre for Nature Inspired Engineering (CNIE), in London, UK and of the Catalan Institute for Energy Research (IREC), in Barcelona, Spain. She is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Molecular Liquids. Prof. Vega is also the President of the Association of the Spanish Scientists and Researchers in the UAE (ACIEAU).

Prof. Vega obtained her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Seville, Spain (1992), in collaboration with the Chemical Engineering Department, University of Southern California, USA

Dr Ahmed is an Associate Professor of epidemiology. He holds an M.B.B.S. degree from the University of Khartoum, Sudan and a Ph.D. from the UiT–The Arctic University of Norway, Norway.  He has contributed to various successful research projects, received many research grants, and published numerous scientific articles. He has special interest in epidemiological study designs, research methodology and data analysis.

Dr. Mahmoud Rasras is an Associate Professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering at New York University, Abu Dhabi. He received a Ph.D. degree in physics from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium in 2000.  Since joining NYUAD in 2017, his research activities continued with focus on Silicon photonics and integration on atomically thin Graphene and other 2D materials. This a promising technology that may revolutionize next-generation telecommunication and electronics systems. Dr. Rasras authored and co-authored more than 150 papers in high-impact journals and conferences. He holds 33 US-issued patents. He is currently an Associate Editor of Optics Express journal

Dr. Chiesa is a material scientist whose work focuses in creating and implementing technologies necessary to adapt the current energy system into a more sustainable, competitive and secure one. Dr. Chiesa designs and investigates engineered nanomaterials for solar energy conversion and storage systems. Currently He focuses his research on tackling specific challenges related to the deployment of renewable energy under desert conditions through a synthetic and symbiotic approach. Dr. Chiesa cultivates interdisciplinarity and combine technologies to create optimal solutions while ensuring their harmonious integration in a societal context to achieve sustainable living and the wellbeing of people. This approach has characterised his research at Masdar Institute (now KU) where, since 2007 he has systematically tackled several of the major challenges related to solar energy implementation in desert environment. The outcome of his research has been pivotal in the realisation of photovoltaics projects promising electricity at record-low prices with PPA (power purchase agreement) bids reaching as low as 1.35c/kWh. In terms of scholar contribution, Dr. Chiesa has built a dynamic team that is recognised by his community for consistently attempting to enhance the capability of the AFM (Atomic Force Microscopy) in characterising not only morphological variations in the surface, but also identifying chemistry and even distinguishing material phases that are not straightforwardly identified by traditional techniques.

After completing his PhD at Oregon State University in Chemical Engineering, Prof. Al-Marzouqi worked as a Corrosion Engineer in ADNOC Onshore previously known as Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO). He, then, joined the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the UAE University as an Assistant Professor, promoted to Associate Professor and Professor. Prof. Al-Marzouqi served as a Chairman of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering Department, an Assistant Dean for Research, Director of the University’s Emirates Center for Energy and Environment Research, and currently serving as a Vice Dean, College of Engineering.

Prof. Al-Marzouqi published 70 refereed International Journal papers, two book chapters and 55 conference presentations in addition to several invited technical talks. His journal papers are cited 1823 (Google Scholar) and 1327 (Scopus: ID: 10041707400) times with H-index of 26 (Google Scholar) and 22 (Scopus). 68 of Prof. Al-Marzouqi’s 70 journal publications were resulted from his work at UAE University. Prof. Al-Marzouqi have supervised several MSc and PhD students. He and another colleague from UAE University developed two commercial gas analyzers for online measurement of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide concentrations in gas streams which resulted in two Japanese patents and a US patent.

Prof. Al-Marzouqi reviewed several manuscripts for publications in several International Journals and proposals for possible funding including Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). He was a member of review committee for Zayed Future Energy Prize. Prof. Al-Marzouqi chaired several sessions of conferences at the regional and local levels. He supervised students on their graduation projects and participated in the Environmental Design Contest hosted by Waste-management Education and Research Consortium (WERC) in New Mexico, USA for three consecutive years and competed with about 50 teams from USA and other international teams. Prof. Al-Marzouqi initiated and chaired “Environmental Design Competition”, hosted at UAE University, for four consecutive times. The aim was for the students to tackle real environmental challenges while addressing issues including technical, legal, health, community relations and economics. Prof. Al-Marzouqi was a member of the Foundation’s Program Council for the Environment, Emirates Foundation and UAE University representative in Environmental Agency, Fujarah Renewable Energy Program, Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (DEWA) for Exhibition on Water, Energy and Environment, Technology Symposium on Water Treatment, and in The 22nd Joint GCC-Japan Environment Symposium (Saudi Arabia) and The Joint Kingdom of Bahrain-Japan Symposium (Bahrain).

Prof. Al-Marzouqi have received several awards including First 43 UAE Pioneers, Awarded by Sheikh Mohamed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, 2014 and Prime Minister’s medal for innovative employee, 2019, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Dr. Mohamed Shawky El Moursi is currently a Professor with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Khalifa University, specializing in renewable energy integration and Smart Grid development. He is also the theme lead of Renewable Energy Integration and Storage Systems at the Advanced Power and Energy Center (APEC). His professional experience is based on a solid and profound expertise on practical system implementation with the agent of Siemens for PV system, R&D technological development with leader wind turbine manufacture, Vestas Wind Systems (HQ Technology R&D, Denmark) and Transmission System Planning and Operation with Abu Dhabi Transmission and Dispatch Company, TRANSCO. In 2012, he was a Visiting Professor in the EECS Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He received several international and national prestigious awards such as UAE Mission Innovation Champion in 2019 at Fourth Mission Innovation Ministerial event in Vancouver, Canada; Faculty Research Excellence Award 2018 for the College of Engineering, Professor at Khalifa University; Expert and Key Employee benefits in Denmark and other prestigious awards. He was successfully able to secure a large amount of research grants based on internally and externally funded projects which amount $8,054,129 from Europe, North America, GCC countries and South Korea. These projects resulted in remarkable research outcomes and innovations that have been documented with a record of top-quality publications (180 papers) as well as 3 US patents. He is also an Editor for several top-tier IEEE Transactions, a regional editor of IET RPG and the chair for the IEEE PES UAE Chapter. In addition, he has graduated high caliber (9) PhD and (24) MSc students, whereby he achieved several best thesis and national awards for his students. He has designed and developed several in-house experimental prototypes and tools along with his research team. He is currently implementing a novel Stability Assessment, Visualization and Enhancement (SAVE) Tool for TRANSCO’s network based on novel AI Techniques, data analytics and deep Learning which financially supported by TRANSCO and Manitoba Hydro International, Canada. Along with KU team, he developed a novel Renewable Energy Management System (REMS Tool) that has been financially supported by ELIA GRID International (Belgium).

Dr. Afzaal is currently an Assistant Professor at the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), Sharjah. After completing BSC in Chemistry from Aston University, UK in 2000, he undertook his PhD in Inorganic Materials Chemistry at the University of Manchester, UK in 2004. After teaching and research stints at Manchester University, KFUPM, and Salford University, he joined HCT in 2018.
His research focus is on multiple facets of Advanced Functional Inorganic Materials where the primary target is on the deposition of semiconducting thin films using atmospheric-pressure chemical vapour deposition processes, solution-processed quantum dot systems, and designing of novel chalcogenide precursors for renewable energy technologies. He has authored and/or co-authored 100+ papers in leading scientific journals with an h-index of 38. He has presented extensively at national and international conferences. He is a recipient of several research grants targeting and customizing low-cost materials with improved light-harvesting or charge transfer properties and processes capable of reducing cell fabrication costs.

Mohammed F. Daqaq is a Global Network Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the current Associate Dean of Engineering at New York University, Abu Dhabi. He received his B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology in 2001, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech in 2003, and 2006, respectively. In 2006, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University as an Assistant Professor. He went through the ranks to become a tenured Associate Professor in 2012. In 2016, Mohammed was named the D. W. Reynolds Endowed Scholar of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University. In 2017, Mohammed joined the ranks of New York University, Abu Dhabi. 

Mohammed’s research focuses on the application of various nonlinear phenomena to improve the performance of power generation systems, micro-electromechanical systems, and vibration assisted manufacturing processes. In particular, his current research promotes using Origami principles to create novel engineering structures with enhanced capabilities. He has published more than 150 papers in archival journals, and conference proceedings.

Mohammed’s research has been funded through several grants from ADEK and the National Science Foundation including the prestigious CAREER award. His research has also been recognized at the international level through several awards including the 2016 C. D. Mote Jr. Early Career Award from the ASME Design Division, the 2014 Gary Anderson Early Achievement Awardfrom the ASME Aerospace Division, the 2014 Eastman Chemical Award for research excellence, and the 2012 Clemson University Board of Trustees Award for Faculty Excellence. Mohammed ranks in the top 0.5% scientists in the field of Acoustics according to Stanford’s University 2020 ranking of scientists in their respective fields. Mohammed is a Fellow of the ASME and serves as the editor of the Journal Methods X (Energy, ElSevier) and as a subject editor of the Journal Nonlinear Dynamics (Nature).

Prior to moving to Dubai, Dr Atieh has been teaching Periodontology and Oral Implantology at University of Otago and working in private practice in New Zealand. Dr Atieh holds a Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree from the University of Jordan, a Master of Science degree in Oral Surgery from the University of Manchester, a Doctor of Clinical Dentistry degree in Periodontology and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Oral Implantology from the University of Otago
Dr Atieh is a member of the New Zealand Dental Association, the New Zealand Society of Periodontology, the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons and the American Academy of Periodontology. He is also a fellow of the International Team for Implantology (ITI)

Monica Menendez is the Associate Dean of Engineering for Graduate Affairs and a Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), as well as a Global Network Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering at the Tandon School of Engineering in New York University (NYU). She is also the Director and Lead PI of the NYUAD Research Center for Interacting Urban Networks (CITIES); and the recipient of the NYUAD Distinguished Research Award for 2021.

Between 2010 and 2017, Monica was the Director of the research group Traffic Engineering at ETH Zurich. Prior to that, she was a management consultant at Bain & Company. She joined Bain after receiving a PhD and a MSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2006. During her studies there, she received, among other awards, an NSF Fellowship and the Gordon F. Newell Award. In total, she is the recipient of more than 20 scholarships and awards from well-known and prestigious organizations, professional societies, and universities. Monica also holds a dual degree in Civil Engineering and Architectural Engineering from the University of Miami, from where she graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2002.

Her research interests include monitoring, modeling, and control of multimodal transportation systems, considering new technologies and data sources. She is an active reviewer for over 20 journals, and and a member of multiple editorial boards for top journals in Transportation. She is also a member of a number of international organizations, including the International Advisory Committee of the International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory (ISTTT). Monica is the author of over 90 peer reviewed journal publications and over 200 conference contributions, book chapters, editorials, and technical reports. In the last five years, five of the papers that she has co-authored, have received best-paper awards.

Nader Masmoudi received his degree in Mathematics from the École Normale Supérieure Paris (1996) and his PhD from Paris Dauphine University (1999) and his HDR in 2000. He won the gold medal at the International Mathematic Olympiads in 1992, was 1st at the Concours of École Normale Supérieure and Ecole Polytechnique in 1994, and won a Presidential prize in Tunisia in 1994. He received a Senior Clay Math Scholar in fall 2014. He received a chair of excellence from the Foundation Sciences Mathématiques de Paris from 2016-2017.   Nader Masmoudi was awarded the Fermat Prize in 2017 for his remarkable work of depth and creativity in the analysis of non-linear partial differential equations and in particular for his contributions to the rigorous and complete resolution of hydrodynamic stability problems raised at the end of the 19th century by father founders of modern fluid mechanics.  Nader was also awarded the Kuwait prize 2019 from the KFAS, and more recently in 2021 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a professor in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University.

Naveed Ahmed Khan (BSc, MSc, PhD) is Professor of Medical Microbiology. Previously, he has held positions at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, USA; Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA; University of London, UK; University of Nottingham, UK; Aga Khan University, Pakistan; Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Biological Sciences at Sunway University, Malaysia and Professor and Head at the American University of Sharjah. With research grants of over $4 million, he has produced over 350 peer-reviewed publications, 7 books and 7 chapters, and guided over 50 graduate students. In recognition of his research efforts, he has received awards from the UK, USA, Pakistan, Malaysia and the UAE.

Professor Nidal Hilal received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1981 followed by a master’s degree in advanced chemical engineering from Swansea University in the United Kingdom in 1986. He received his PhD degree from Swansea University in 1988, where he later founded the internationally recognized Centre for Water Advanced Technologies and Environmental Research (CWATER)*. He is a chartered engineer (CEng) in the UK, a registered European Engineer (Euro Ing) and is an elected fellow of both the Institution of Chemical Engineers (FIChemE) and the Learned Society of Wales (FLSW).
He is currently a Global Network Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at New York University and is the Director of New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Water research Center. 
He is internationally recognized, as indicated by google scholar**, as one of the world leaders in Desalination especially in Membrane Separation, Membrane Distillation and Reverse Osmosis. He has published 7 handbooks, 56 invited book chapters and around 500 articles in refereed scientific literature. His research has produced several breakthrough innovations, including: development novel technology to show distinct pores in nanofiltration membranes, development of Molecularly imprinted membranes, development of novel membranes, the use of AFM in the development of new membranes with optimized properties for difficult separations, smallest AFM colloid probe reported in the literature, first AFM coated colloid probe technique, first AFM cell probe technique, first direct measurements of the interaction of single live cells with surfaces, first use of the atomic force microscope in meso-scale cavitation studies.
He has chaired and delivered lectures at numerous international conferences. In 2005 he was awarded Doctor of Science (DSc) from the University of Wales in the United Kingdom in recognition of an outstanding international research contribution in the field of Membrane Science and Water Process Engineering including Desalination. He was also awarded the Kuwait Prize for applied science “Water resources development” in 2005.
Professor Hilal is the Editor-in-Chief for the international journal Desalination. He sits on the editorial boards of several international journals, is an advisory board member of several multinational organizations and has served on/consulted for industry, government departments, research councils and universities on an international basis.

Nizar Habash is a Professor of Computer Science at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). He is also the director of the Computational Approaches to Modeling Language (CAMeL) Lab. Professor Habash specializes in natural language processing and computational linguistics. Before joining NYUAD in 2014, he was a research scientist at Columbia University's Center for Computational Learning Systems. He received is PhD in Computer Science from the University of Maryland College Park in 2003. He has two bachelors degrees, one in Computer Engineering and one in Linguistics and Languages from Old Dominion University. His research includes extensive work on machine translation, morphological analysis, and computational modeling of Arabic and its dialects. Professor Habash has been a principal investigator or co-investigator on over 25 research grants. And he has over 200 publications including a book entitled "Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing".

Norbert Nowotny is an Austrian-born virologist with a broad teaching and research interest and more than 40 years experience in all aspects of viral infectious diseases. He was educated at the University of Vienna and conducted his Ph.D. studies at the University of Vienna Medical School. He graduated to PhD sub auspiciis praesidentis rei publicae in January 1982.
He served as Professor of Virology at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria (1997-current); at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University, Al Ain (2001-2006); at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman (2012-2016); and at the College of Medicine, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dubai (MBRU, 2016-2019). Since 2019 he is Visiting Professor at MBRU.

Ozgur Sinanoglu is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at New York University Abu Dhabi. He is also the managing director of the Center for CyberSecurity. He is currently the chair of the Promotion and Tenure Committee at NYU Abu Dhabi. Between 2016 and 2020, he was the Associate Dean of Engineering at NYU Abu Dhabi.

He earned his B.S. degrees, one in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and one in Computer Engineering, both from Bogazici University, Turkey in 1999. He obtained his MS and PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from University of California San Diego in 2001 and 2004, respectively. He has industry experience at Texas Instruments, IBM and Qualcomm, and has been with NYU Abu Dhabi since 2010.

During his PhD, he won the IBM PhD fellowship award twice. He is also the recipient of the best paper awards at IEEE VLSI Test Symposium 2011 and ACM Conference on Computer and Communication Security 2013, which is the #1 cybersecurity venue in the world. His students won awards such as “TTTC's E. J. McCluskey Doctoral Thesis Award” (Samah Saeed, 2014) and "IBM Great Minds Internship Award" (Sachhidh Kannan, 2012), which was the first to be received from the MiddleEast Region.

Prof. Sinanoglu’s research interests include cybersecurity of electronics, and in particular, chips. He has more than 200 conference and journal papers, and 20 issued and pending US Patents, and a book. He has served as track/topic chair or technical program committee member in about 15 conferences, and as (guest) associate editor for around 10 journals. He also chaired and hosted multiple conferences in Abu Dhabi, most notably, ACM Asia Symposium on InformAtion, Computer and Communications Security in 2017 (#1 cybersecurity venue in Asia).

Prof. Sinanoglu is the director of the Design-for-Excellence Lab at NYU Abu Dhabi. His lab has designed and fabricated the first electronic chips that are resilient to reverse engineering and tampering. His research work has been featured various times locally and internationally, most notably by the UAE National multiple times and recently by Ozy.

Sinanoglu's recent research in hardware security and trust has been funded by Mubadala Technology, US National Science Foundation, US Department of Defense (DARPA and Army Research Office), Semiconductor Research Corporation, and Intel Corporation.

According to a recent study by Stanford University, Prof. Sinanoglu is within the top 2% of 17,080 researchers in the "Computer Hardware and Architecture" field in the world. He is the only UAE representative in the top 2% and one of only three in the greater MENA region.

Dr. Panche Naumov holds a Ph.D. in chemistry and materials science from Tokyo Institute of Technology. He was a research fellow at the National Institute for Materials Science and faculty at Osaka University and Kyoto University, before he was appointed as a faculty at New York University Abu Dhabi, where he currently is a tenured professor, with a cross-appointment at New York University’s Molecular Design Institute, and a Director of the Center for Smart Engineering Materials.

Dr. Naumov is the founding Chair of the UAE Chapter and a fellow of the American Chemical Society, founding President of the Emirates Crystallographic Society, councilor of the European Crystallographic Association, consultant of the International Union of Crystallography, and a member of the Emirates Science Council. He has been awarded a fellowship from the Japanese Ministry of Education and Science, Human Frontier Science award, Asian and Oceanian Photochemistry Association Prize, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Radcliffe fellowship at Harvard University, and the Hans and Marlies Zimmer Award. He currently is a member and a fellow of the American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, European Crystallographic Association, American Crystallographic Association, and Mohamed Bin Rashid Academy of Scientists.

Prof. Percipalle has a degree in Chemistry and a PhD in Molecular Genetics awarded by the International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy. As PhD student he trained at the UNIDO International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), Trieste. For postdoctoral training he worked at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK, and at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. As postdoc, he was awarded EMBO, Marie Curie and Blanceflor-Ludovisi long-term postdoctoral fellowships. In 2004, Prof. Percipalle joined the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Karolinska Institute, as Group Leader and, later on, as Associate Professor of Cell Biology with grants from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and Swedish Cancer Society (Cancerfonden). During this period, he was awarded tenure at the Karolinska Institute and got the Svedberg Prize for Biochemistry by the Swedish Academy of Science. In 2015 he moved to New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi as Associate Professor of Biology, affiliated with the Department of Biology, NYU, New York. In 2019, he was awarded tenure at NYU. He is currently standing faculty at NYU Abu Dhabi, Science Representative at the Faculty Council Steering Committee and Director of the Biology Program. He currently holds an appointment as Guest Professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm University. He maintains close collaborative research and teaching ties with national and international research institutions including Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi and ICGEB. Prof. Percipalle is Associate Editor for the journal Experimental Cell Research (Elsevier)

Professor Qutayba Hamid is a distinguished scientist in Respiratory Medicine and a researcher in Asthma; he is currently the Vice Chancellor for Medical and Health Sciences and the Dean of the College of Medicine in the University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Prof. Qutayba was born in Mosul, Iraq. He graduated from the College of Medicine, Mosul University and was trained at the University Hospital in Mosul before travelling to the UK to continue his studies at the Imperial College of London. He served as a lecturer at the National Heart and Lung Institute in London and as a researcher on asthma and allergies.

For his outstanding research accomplishments, Professor Hamid has received many notable Awards, among which include the best clinical researcher in Canada, the distinguished Scientist Award from the American Respiratory Association in Clinical medicine, medical education and research, a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was also honoured by several countries including Japan, the United States, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. In 2014, he was awarded by H.H Sheikh Sultan Al Qassimi, Ruler of Sharjah, President of Sharjah University. In recognition of his achievements and contributions to the medical field, Professor Qutayba is awarded the Hamdan Award for honouring Distinguished Personalities from the Arab World for the 2017-2018 term

Raed Hashaikeh is a Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Program, New York University-Abu Dhabi. He received his MSc and PhD in Materials Engineering from McGill University in 2000, and 2005, respectively. In 2008, He joined the Mechanical and Materials Engineering Department at Masdar Institute as an Assistant Professor and went through the ranks to become a Full Professor. Between 2017 and 2019, he was a Professor at the Chemical Engineering Department, Khalifa University. Before joining the Masdar Institute, he spent two years at FPInnovations-Paprican division, Canada, as a scientist (Awarded the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Industrial Research and Development Fellow). He was also a visiting scholar at MIT for one year between 2008 and 2009.

Professor Abu Al-Rub is currently the Acting Chair of Aerospace Engineering Department, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Director of Advanced Digital & Additive Manufacturing Center at Khalifa University of Science and Technology. He was the Department Head of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Masdar Institute. He has been a Professor at Texas A&M University. Currently, he is also an Adjunct Professor at the US Air Force Institute of Technology of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, and his MSc and BSc from Jordan University of Science and Technology. Before joining Texas A&M University, he was a Professor at Louisiana State University and at Catholic University of America.

Professor Abu Al-Rub is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Society of Engineering Science (SES), U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics, ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute, and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). He has twice been recognized by The Texas A&M University System with its Student-Led Teaching Excellence Award, in 2009 and 2011. In 2010 he received the Truman R. Jones Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award and the Tenneco Oil Exploration & Production Award for Meritorious Teaching of Engineering Award from the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. He is also the recipient of the 2005 Achievement Award for the outstanding teaching at Louisiana State University. In 2011, he received the Beer & Johnston Outstanding New Mechanics Educator Award from the American Society for Engineering Education. He received ADNOC Oil & Gas Year's 2016 Partnership of The Year Award. He has been recognized several times for his work on multi-scale computational mechanics. Professor Abu Al-Rub has been selected among the Scholar Google 100 Most Cited Authors in Civil Engineering. He is on the editorial board of several journals in the area of multi-scale computational mechanics.

Dr. Rim Fares is an astrophysicist. She is specialized in studying magnetism in stars, exoplanets, their environment, interactions with their hosting stars, and habitability.
She earned a PhD in Astrophysics from Paul Sabatier University in France. After her PhD, she worked as a research fellow at the University of St Andrews in the United Kingdom, and at the Astrophysical Observatory of Catania/The National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy. She then moved to Lebanon as an assistant professor (part-time) at the Lebanese American University, before joining the United Arab Emirates University in 2019 as an assistant professor. Dr. Fares is a member of international Astronomical societies (Arab, French, and European societies, as well as the International Astronomical Union). She is a board member of the Arab Astronomical Society, and a member of the Organizing Committee of the “Impact of Magnetic Activity on Solar and Stellar Environments” Commission of the International Astronomical Union. She co-authored a book chapter, 40+ peer-reviewed papers, with 2500+ Scopus citations.

Dr. Saeed Alhassan is an associate professor in the department of chemical engineering at Khalifa University. He holds BE, MSc and PhD in chemical engineering from Vanderbilt University, Colorado School of Mines and Case Western Reserve University, respectively.  Since starting his academic career at Khalifa University (Petroleum Institute) in 2011, Dr. Saeed worked on developing new applications for elemental sulfur as United Arab Emirates (UAE) was gearing up to become the largest exporter of the yellow element in the world. Elemental sulfur has historically limited applications except for sulfuric acid; which is one of the most industrially used chemicals in the world. Besides that, elemental sulfur has applications in rubber and specialty chemicals. UAE’s economic growth requires energy mix of natural gas and renewables. The supply of natural gas comes predominantly from sour gas field in Abu Dhabi where hydrogen sulfide has to be converted to elemental sulfur. Thus, elemental sulfur is inevitable eventuality for energy production needs and UAE’s production of this element is set to increase in the future. Such increase will impact the market supply; which will cause drops in prices.

The approach to the above problem is to develop new applications based on elemental sulfur from both fundamental point of view and practical point of view. As for the former, the need to understand sulfur chemistry is paramount in coming with new insights into sulfur chemistry and physics that can be used as basis for applications that have not been considered before. As for the practical approach, several novel materials and composites were developed for various applications. In one of Dr. Saeed’s earlier work, elemental sulfur was directly used in fabrication of thermoplastic composites. These composites have potential applications in construction, agricultural and energy industries. Metal sulfides, both in nanoparticles form as well as in porous foams; were also fabricated and synthesized for catalytic applications. Zinc sulfides nanoparticles were used as active materials in photocatalytic production of hydrogen and environmental remedies. Molybdenum sulfide foam were used in hydrodesulphurization process with significantly better performance compared to other materials reported in the literature.

Sajid Maqsood is a Professor in Department of Food, Nutrition and Health at College of Food and Agriculture, UAEU. He has obtained his PhD in Food Science and Technology from Prince of Songkla University, Thailand (2010). He has started his academic career in May-2011 at UAEU as a post-doctorate Fellow after which he was appointed as Assistant Professor in Aug-2011. Currently, he is a Full Professor in Food Science and Assistant Dean of Research and Graduate Studies at College of Food and Agriculture, UAEU.

Prof. Samir Attoub is the Chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, since 2019. He received his degree of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 1993 from Constantine University in Algeria and later his master’s degree from Paris Diderot University. In 1998, Dr. Attoub obtained his PhD from Paris Diderot University and his Habilitation to Direct Research (equivalent to Docent) from Paris René Descartes University in France in 2002. Later, he served as a Senior Research Scientist at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in France. He joined the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at United Arab Emirates University in 2004 as an Assistant Professor, and he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009 and full Professor in 2015.
Dr. Attoub research is mainly in the field of cancer research aiming at the understanding of the molecular mechanism of cancer progression with more focused on the role of Akt, NFĸB, NOTCH, STAT3, and PD-L1 pathways as a driving force behind cancer progression (cancer survival, proliferation, invasion, angiogenesis, and metastasis). He is also investigating the development of novel cancer therapeutics that will provide better control of tumor growth and metastasis.
Dr. Attoub has a total of 77 publications in high-ranking peer-reviewed journals (2 Nature, 1 Gastroenterology, 4 FASEB J, 4 Cancer research, 3 Oncogene, 1 Gut, 1 Molecular Cancer Therapeutic, 1 Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets, 2 Frontiers in Oncology, 4 Scientific Reports...). As per Google Scholars, his total citation is 5766, H-index of 36, i10-index of 59. He is a co-inventor in one registered patent in 2019 entitled “Thymoquinone Derivatives for Treatment of Cancer”. He has also published 90 referred abstracts and oral presentations in national and international conferences. He has been consistent in securing research funds from various funding agencies, including the French Association for Cancer Research, Terry Fox Funds for Cancer Research, Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Medical Sciences and UAE University grants. Dr. Attoub is actively involved in supervising Medical, Bachelor, and graduate students. In addition, he served as an examiner of nine PhD and six master’s students.
Dr. Attoub received awards from the French National Academy of Medicine, Appert Institute of Nutrition in France, the UAE University, and Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Medical Research. He has received three times the UAE University award for researchers with publication in top journals of their disciplines. In 2020, he received the College of Medicine and Health Sciences Award for Excellence in Research and the United Arabs Emirates University Award for Excellence in Scholarship.
Dr. Attoub served as a reviewer for many research grant agencies, including the European Research Council, King Hussein Award for Cancer Research, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, Al Jalila Foundation in Dubai, Department of Health and Medical Services/Government of Dubai, the Scottish Hospital Endowments Research Trust in Scotland, the Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro in Italy, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and National Science Center in Poland. He is also a reviewer for top international peer-reviewed journals, including Gastroenterology, FASEB J, Gut, Molecular Biology of the Cell, Cancer Letters, and International Journal of Cancer. Dr. Attoub currently serves as the Academic Editor for Scientific Reports/Nature publisher and Frontiers in Oncology. Dr. Attoub is an active member of the Sheikh Hamdan Award for International Research and Sheikh Hamdan Award for Humanitarian Work in Medical Fields.

Dr. Sehamuddin Galadari is a Senior Vice Provost-Research and Managing Director of the Research at New York University Abu Dhabi, and a Professor of Biology and an Emiretus Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Cell Biology at the same university.

Dr. Sehamuddin Galadari holds a PhD in Biochemistry in 1991 from Imperial College in the United Kingdom. Prof. Sehamuddin has been a Visiting Professor to many well-known institutions such as Imperial College (UK), University of Glasgow (UK), Duke University Medical Centre (USA), Medical University of South Carolina (USA) and POSTECH (South Korea). He is a reviewer and has served on the editorial board of a number of biomedical journals.

Dr. Sofian Kanan received his Bachelor and Master (Organic Chemistry) degrees from Yarmouk University in 1989 and 1991, respectively. He earned his Ph.D. in Inorganic & Material Chemistry from the University of Maine in 2000 and he worked as a Research Associate at the Laboratory for Surface Science & Technology (LASST), University of Maine for two years, where he gained valuable experience operating major and diverse equipment for materials characterization and analysis. He also worked as a Senior Scientist at Sensor Research and Development Corporation (SRD-Corp.) for one year. In 2003, he started his academic career as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the American University of Sharjah (AUS). Since joining the Biology, Chemistry and Environmental Sciences department at AUS, Dr. Kanan has maintained an exceptional record in teaching, research, and service. This exemplary work and dedication led to a rolling contract along with a quick promotion to the Associate rank within 3 years of joining AUS, as well as a promotion to the rank of Professor four years after. Dr. Kanan has received a number of awards and grants for his teaching and research activities. He is an Editorial Board Member of Scientific Reports, Research on Chemical Intermediates, Cogent Environmental Science, Current Organocatalysis, and The Jordan Journal of Earth and Environmental Sciences Journals. His research interests are multidisciplinary with a main goal to understand the relationship between the molecular surface chemistry and macroscopic properties of materials. This includes Sol-Gel synthesis, developing materials as sensors for various applications (semiconducting metal oxides, electrochemical, and luminescence sensors), modifying strategies to make nanomaterials and understanding their surface chemistry, adsorption/desorption behaviors of pollutant molecules in solid/liquid and solid/gas interface, and modifying heterogeneous catalysts to eliminate the contamination of pesticides and other organic pollutants in water resources. He has published 100+ peer reviewed articles and conference presentations.

Professor Stefan du Plessis is the Dean of Research and Graduate Studies, and a Professor of Physiology at the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU) in Dubai. He completed his tertiary education, including an MSc and PhD in Reproductive Physiology as well as an MBA, at Stellenbosch University (SU), South Africa. He subsequently joined SU as Faculty where he rose through the ranks to full Professor and served 3 terms as Head of the Division of Medical Physiology was also elected as member of the University Council. His research interests are in the field of male reproductive physiology, resulting in more than 112 peer-reviewed articles and more than 6600 citations with an h-index of 40 (Scopus). He also has to his credit 28 book chapters and 4 books and has supervised numerous Doctoral and Master’s students. He serves on the editorial board of two international journals and acts as an ad hoc reviewer for various funding bodies and scientific journals. Prof du Plessis is a South African National Research Foundation B-rated researcher and the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship. During his career he has received several other teaching and research awards, including the Edmund Sabanegh Award for Excellence in Male Infertility Research from the Cleveland Clinic Ohio and the Excellence in Physiology Research Award from the Physiological Society of Southern Africa.

Stéphane Boissinot is Professor Biology and Head of the Biology Program at New York University Abu Dhabi. He received his PhD in 1994 from the University of Montpellier (France) on the evolution of the house mouse. He then held post-doctoral positions at the University of Texas where he studied the evolution of color vision in primates and at the National Institutes of Health where he worked on the evolution of mobile DNA elements in humans. He was a member of the faculty in the Department of Biology at Queens College, the City University of New York, from 2003 to 2014. He joined NYU Abu Dhabi in 2015.

Professor Suhail N. Abdullah Al-Salam (MBChB, MSc.Path, FIBMS.Path, EBP, FRCPath) is a professor of pathology and chair of the department of pathology and leader of the Oncology Research Priority Group at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University. In addition, Professor Al-Salam is a consultant pathologist at Tawam hospital with providing clinical service in surgical pathology and medical renal biopsies; and he is one of the few experts in Nephropathology in the UAE.
Professor Al-Salam has published 123 original articles in international peer reviewed journals, with many of them are published in prestigious journals like: Blood, Cancer Research, British Journal of Pharmacology, Pediatrics, Cellular Physiology and biochemistry, Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, International Journal of Nanomedicine, Annals of New York Academy sciences, Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol , Am J Physiol Renal Physiol.
Professor Al-Salam has been awarded many research grants and has oral presentations at many local and international scientific meetings. Professor Al-Salam supervised a number of PhD and master students. He has organized a number of local pathology meetings. Professor Al-Salam is the winner of Abu Dhabi Medical distinction award 2011, Excellence in Teaching, Awards, CMHS,UAEU 2007, 2018, 2020, Excellence in Scholar Award CMHS, UAEU 2014, and Excellence in students mentor Awards, CMHS,UAEU 2018 , 2020. He is an expert reviewer for many biomedical journals.

Sulaiman Al-Zuhair is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at UAE University and currently holds the position of Head of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department. Before that, he held the positions of Director of Project Management Unit and Coordinator of the Postgraduate Program. Prof. Al-Zuhair has been in charge of enhancing the ranking of the University from 2017-2020, during which, the university ranking witnessed significant improvement in both QS and THE rankings.
Prof. Al-Zuhair’s research resulted in the publication of 81 journals papers indexed in Scopus, and his current Scopus h-index is 28. He also has three patents under his name and published a book and three book chapters. As a Principal Investigator, Prof. Al-Zuhair was able to secure research funds of over AED 3 million dirhams, and over AED 20 million as a Co-Investigator. He is the recipient of the Dubai Award for Sustainable Transport (Best Academic Research) and the UAEU Research Excellence Award in 2019, College of Engineering Excellence Overall Performance in 2017 and 2019, and Excellence Research Award in 2016 and 2020. Prof. Al-Zuhair delivered several keynote speeches at local and international conferences. He is on the Editorial Boards in a number of journals, and had held positions in the scientific and organizing committees of several international conferences.

Sunil Kumar is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). He received a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, MS in Mechanical Engineering and MA in Mathematics from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and a BTech (Hons) from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur. He was the founding Dean of Engineering at NYUAD from 2009 until 2015, and from 2015 to 2020 the inaugural Vice Provost for Graduate and Postdoctoral Programs. Before joining NYUAD he was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the Dean of the Graduate School at New York University Tandon School of Engineering in New York, USA. He also previously held the positions of Department Head of Mechanical, Aerospace, Manufacturing Engineering, and co-Director of Energy Systems Lab. He joined New York University School of Engineering in 1990. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Professor Tahir A. Rizvi obtained his doctorate degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India, 1987. He did his postdoctoral training at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA and later was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Texas, USA in 1992. In 1997, he was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and in 2001 joined the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, College of Medicine, and Health Sciences (CMHS) at UAE University in Al Ain. In 2006, he was promoted to the rank of Full Professor.

The focus of Prof. Rizvi’s research over the last 3 decades has been to elucidate the basic steps in retroviral replication with the ultimate goal of developing improved retroviral vector systems for human gene therapy. The current focus of research in his laboratory is on how retroviruses package their genomic RNAs into virus particles and what are some of the underlying differences in RNA packaging among different retroviruses. Over the years, these studies have included a number of retroviruses, including HIV, SIV, FIV, MMTV, and MPMV. His current studies on RNA packaging have been published in journals of international repute. Prof. Rizvi has been consistently successful in competing for both intramural and extramural grants, including the prestigious Wellcome Trust grant. In addition to serving as an ad hoc reviewer for several national/international scientific journals, Prof. Rizvi has served as an editorial board member of the leading virology journal, “Retrovirology” and is currently working on the editorial board of “Scientific Reports”.

Dr. Tarek H.M. El-Fouly received his BSc and MSc degrees from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt in 1996 and 2002, respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University Of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, in 2008. During the course of his PhD studies, he received Dr. M. Chandrashekar Memorial Award in Sustainable Energy, University of Waterloo, in 2003 and the Ontario Graduate Scholarships in Science and Technology (OGSST) in 2005. Dr. El-Fouly joined CanmetENERGY, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), Government of Canada, in 2008, as a Transmission and Distribution Research Engineer. In 2010, he was appointed as Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Waterloo. In 2014, he was promoted to Smart Microgrids Research Manager at CanmetENERGY, Natural Resources Canada. During this period, he managed 5 research and development projects and participated in managing 1 utility-scale smart grid demonstration project in Iqaluit. Moreover, he chaired and managed an advisory committee, the “NRCan Technical Expert Interest Group for Remote Microgrids”, and served as a technical reviewers in 3 committees for research, and development and demonstration funds project proposals. On January 2015, Dr. El-Fouly joined Khalifa University of Science and Technology as an Assistant Professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and got promoted to Associate Professor on July 2019. He served as the UAE IEEE Power and Energy Society Chapter Treasurer/Secretary since Fall 2016 and then the Vice Chair of the Chapter till the end of 2019. In 2016, he got Elevated to the grade of Senior member at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Dr. El-Fouly conducts research on smart grids, microgrids, remote isolated grids, high penetration of renewable energy resources and integration of electrical energy storage systems. He is/was involved in research supervision of 4 Postdoctoral fellows; 3 PhD students, 6 MSc students, and 7 researchers. He served as a thesis examiner for 6 PhD students and 10 MSc students. He has a total of 38 journal papers, 36 conference papers, 2 book chapters and one patent. He is currently serving as Associate Editor for the IEEE Access and the IET Renewable Power Generation.

Dr. Abdoun received his Ph.D. and M.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (USA) and B.S. from Cairo University (Egypt). Dr. Abdoun's primary research interests are geotechnical centrifuge modeling, soil-structure interaction, soil remediation, remote field sensing, modeling of blast loading, and offshore systems. Dr. Abdoun received several awards from international professional societies, including the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award for best journal publication, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize for outstanding contributions to the study of soil and soil-structure systems subjected to extreme events using centrifuge modeling and development of innovative filed instrumentation.; and the “Commander’s Award for Public Service with accompanying medal.” one of the highest awards given by the US Army to Civilians who provided outstanding technical services. He is also the recipient of several educational society awards, including the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) “Outstanding Teaching Award, the Wharton QS-Stars Reimagine Education (UPENN), and Chi Epsilon National Civil Engineering Honor Society. He authored or co-authored over 300 technical publications."

Prof. TieJun (TJ) Zhang has his whole faculty career at the Masdar Institute, Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, UAE. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in USA. He received his PhD degree from the City University of Hong Kong (2008) and his MSc & BEng degrees from the Southeast University, China (2004 & 2001).
As one of World’s Top 2% of Scientists, he has over 140 peer-reviewed publications and international patents by spring 2021. As an educator, he have mentored over 40 PhD & MSc students and research staffs as well as many intern students.

Prof. Zhang is the recipient of the UAE National Research Foundation University-Industry Research Collaboration Award, the Abu Dhabi Award for Research Excellence, and the US National Academy of Sciences Arab-American Frontiers Fellowship Award. He has been the Principal Investigator of many research projects (over US$10 millions) on energy, water and micro/nanotechnologies, and also served as the Principal Scientist leading the Alibaba Cloud-Khalifa University Joint Innovation Laboratory.

Prof. Zhang is an Associate Editor of Journal of Micro and Nano-Manufacturing of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He is an active committee member of ASME Nanoengineering Technology Group and ASME Heat Transfer Division Technical Committee. He was the co-chair (Arab-side) of the Fourth Arab-American Frontiers of Science, Engineering and Medicine Symposium between USA and 22 Arab countries (organized by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine). He has been an invited reviewer for many international research proposals, doctoral dissertations and over 50 scientific journals.

Dr. Khadkikar is currently a Professor at Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE. He is UAE’s youngest IEEE Fellow (Class of 2022, recognized for his “contributions to power quality solutions”). He is a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS). At Khalifa University, he is a Theme Lead at the following centers: Advanced Power and Energy Center (APEC), Khalifa University Space Technology and Innovation Center (KUSTIC) and Virtual Research Institute (VRI) for Sustainable Energy Production, Storage, and Utilization (funded by ASPIRE). He received his M. Tech. degree in Power Electronics, Electrical Machines and Drives from the Indian Institute of Technology (IITD), New Delhi, India, in 2002 and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS), Montréal, Canada, in 2008. From April 2010 to December 2010, he was a Visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA. From December 2008 to March 2010, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada.  He has contributed over 65 IEEE Transactions papers. He has attracted several external and internal research funds as PI/Co-PI with a total amount of 6.63 million US$. He was ranked 148 among 105,029 researchers in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in the list of world’s top 2% of career-long scientists as of November 2020 released by Stanford University. He received best paper awards (First Prize) from IEEE IAS IACC committee for the paper presented at IEEE IAS Annual Meeting 2021 and from Power Electronics Technical Committee for the paper presented at IEEE Industrial Electronics Society Annual Conference (IECON-2013). During his PhD studies, he received Exemption of School Fees from the Ministry of Education of Quebec, Canada for three semesters between 2014 and 2015. He was also a recipient of national level scholarship for graduate studies provided by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India (July 2001 – Dec 2002).  He is currently an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications and IET Power Electronics Journal.

Dr. Wesley Cantwell is the Director of the Aerospace Research and Innovation Center (ARIC), the Associate Dean for Research and a Professor in Aerospace Engineering at Khalifa University. He received his BSC in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Southampton and MSc and PhD degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Imperial College, UK. He then worked as a Research Scientist in the Department of Materials at the Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne for nine years and as a Lecturer/Reader/Professor at the University of Liverpool for eighteen years. During this time he directed a research team focusing on the impact behavior of lightweight structures. He joined Khalifa University in 2012 to direct the Aerospace Research and Innovation Center (ARIC). This research center is a joint effort between Khalifa University and Mubadala and supports the manufacturing operations at Strata, an aerostructures company located at Al Ain. Phase I of the ARIC initiative focused largely on manufacturing and automation in the aerospace industry. Phase II will expand on these initiative and include topics such as additive manufacturing and digital technologies.

Born and raised in Samo’u – Palestine, Yousef I. M. Salamin is currently a professor of theoretical physics at the American University of Sharjah (AUS). Prior to joining AUS in 2003, he worked at Birzeit University in Palestine (1988 – 2003). He has undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics (with distinction) from Birzeit University, a Master’s degree in physics from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research in theoretical physics has taken him to highly renowned institutions in Europe and North America. He was a Junior Associate, and later a Senior Associate, of the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste (Italy). While affiliated with Birzeit and AUS, Prof. Salamin spent many long research stays (years) and short ones (months) in Germany, including at Bielefeld University, as a Visiting Professor and Humboldt Fellow; Freiburg University, as a Guest Lecturer and Visiting Scientist; Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, as a Distinguished Visiting Scientist; and Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching (near Munich) as a Fellow of the German Academic Exchange Program (DAAD). Prof. Salamin is a member of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America. He is also an Associate Member of the Horace Hearne Institute for Theoretical Physics of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. His name appears among the top 2% of world scientists, according to a recent study conducted at Stanford University.

Current research interests of Prof. Salamin are in atomic, molecular and optical physics; laser-acceleration of electrons, ions and bare atomic nuclei, for medical and industrial applications; and ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (cosmic-ray acceleration to ZeV energies, where 1 ZeV = 1021 electron-volt). He has well over a hundred publications in high-impact international journals of physics, book chapters, and conference proceedings. He is a recipient of the Abdul Hameed Shoman Prize for Young Arab Scientists, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, a Distinguished Scholar Award from the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, and several fellowships from DAAD. Over the years, his research in theoretical physics has attracted about US$600,000 from external and internal sources. He also supervised the work of several graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.