Senior Fellows
CTO of Connection Science and Technical Director of the MIT Trust-Data Consortium at MIT in Cambridge, MA. USA.
Dr Thomas Hardjono
Dr Hardjono is an early pioneer in the field of digital identities and trusted hardware, and has been instrumental in the development and broad adoption of the MIT Kerberos authentication protocol. His activities include leading standard development efforts, notably at the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), IEEE, Trusted Computing Group, Confidential Computing Alliance and others.
He has published more than 70 technical conference/journal papers, several books and more than 30 patents. He is currently involved in several startups around the MIT community. His current area of interest is Web3 Digital Assets, with focus on the interoperability of asset networks and survivability of these networks against cybersecurity attacks.
Professor Francisco Herrera
Professor Herrera received his M.Sc. in Mathematics in 1988 and Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1991, both from the University of Granada, Spain. He is an academician of the Royal Academy of Engineering (Spain) and has published more than 600 journal papers, receiving more than 130,000 citations (Scholar Google, H-index 173), and acts as editorial member of a dozen academic journals. Professor Herrera has been nominated as a Highly Cited Researcher in the fields of Computer Science, Engineering and Clarivate Analytics).
His current research interests include, among others, computational intelligence, information fusion and decision making, explainable artificial intelligence and data science (including data preprocessing, prediction and big data)
Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada and Director of the Andalusian Research Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence (DaSCI). Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences (Spain)
Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, Winner of the Gordon Bell Prize (2019), a member of Academia Europaea, and a Fellow of the ACM and IEEE.
Professor Torsten Hoefler
Following a “Performance as a Science” vision, Professor Hoefler combines mathematical models of architectures and applications to design optimized computing systems. Before joining ETH Zurich, he led the performance modeling and simulation efforts for the first sustained Petascale supercomputer, Blue Waters, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also a key contributor to the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard where he chaired the "Collective Operations and Topologies" working group.
Torsten won best paper awards at ACM/IEEE Supercomputing in 2010, 2013, 2014, 2019, 2022, and at other international conferences. He has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific articles and has won numerous prizes for his work, including the IEEE CS Sidney Fernbach Memorial Award in 2022, and the ACM Gordon Bell Prize in 2019. Torsten was elected to the first steering committee of ACM's SIGHPC in 2013 and he was re-elected for every term since then. His research interests revolve around the central topic of performance-centric system design and include scalable networks, parallel programming techniques, and performance modeling for large-scale simulations and artificial intelligence systems.
Professor Soh Young In
Soh Young In’s research interest is demonstrating environmental, social, and economic incentives related to low-carbon transition and implementing sustainable and resilient infrastructure systems through behavior change of various stakeholders. She studies corporate management, investment strategies, infrastructure development, and public policies required to adopt and mitigate risks posed by climate change and decarbonization transition. Her three main research topics are “Climate Risk Analysis,” “Sustainable Integration,” and “Data-Driven System Transformation.”
Soh Young also serves as a Research Fellow at the Sustainable Finance Initiative (SFI) at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, and holds a B.A. in Economics and Statistics from Columbia University, an M.A. in International Policy from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University.
Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an Affiliate Faculty of the Graduate School of Green Growth and Sustainability at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST)
Professor Jorge P. Zubelli
Professor Zubelli obtained his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley (1989), his MSc from the National Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA – Brazil) in 1984, and his Electrical Engineering degree from IME-RJ in 1983 with specialization on Telecommunications Engineering. He has previous experience as Professor of Mathematics at IMPA and has headed the Laboratory for Analysis and Mathematical Modeling in the Physical Sciences (LAMCA – IMPA) and, from 2002 to 2017, he coordinated the Mathematical Methods in Finance Professional MSc program at IMPA.
His main research area is Inverse Problems and Mathematical Modeling with focus on its applications to real world problems. He has published research in highly selective journals such as Science, Plos One, SIAM Journal of Numerical Analysis, SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, and Physical Review B. He has coordinated a number of academic and industrial projects and research networks.
Professor Zubelli has served as a member of a number of editorial boards and currently serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Applied Finance (IJTAF), Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, and Advances in Continuous and Discrete Models.
Professor and Chair of the Mathematics Department at Khalifa University
Research Fellows
Professor Emilio Porcu
Professor Emilio Porcu received his Ph.D. in statistics in 2005. He became a full professor in 2012, Chair of Statistics at Newcastle University and then at Trinity College, Dublin, at the School of Computer Science and Statistics. He is Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Khalifa University since August 2020, and a member of the Biotechnology Research Center under Dr Habiba Al Safar. He is an adjoint professor at Trinity College, Dublin. His previous roles include Senior Scientist at the MIDAS Research Center on Data Complexity in Santiago, Chile, co-Chair of Spatial Analytics in Newcastle, and Adjoint Professor at ADAPT Trinity College.
Professor Porcu’s main research interests lie within Statistical and Machine Learning, Data Science, and Spatial Statistics. He has published over 160 peer reviewed papers in top journals in Statistics, Machine Learning, and Mathematics. Applications of his research have involved climate change, natural and anthropogenic catastrophes, weather forecast as well as spatial criminology. More recently, he has been increasingly involved in research related to Health Data Science, with broad applications to computational genetics, genomics, and aging.
Department of Mathematics, Khalifa University and Visiting Professor, Trinity College Dublin.
Dr. Praneeth Vepakomma
Assistant Professor, Department of Machine Learning, Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence
Praneeth Vepakomma recently submitted his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Machine Learning at Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi.
He has extensive industrial experience from his time at Meta, Apple, Amazon Web Services, Motorola Solutions, Corning and several startups. He has won the Meta PhD research fellowship in Applied Statistics and two SERC Scholarships (for Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing) from MIT's Schwarzman College of Computing. He co-founded a research based non-profit (Integrity Distributed) that won the Financial Times Digital Innovation Award.
He holds an MS in Mathematical and Applied Statistics from Rutgers University. His research focuses on developing algorithms for distributed computation in statistics & machine learning under constraints of privacy and efficiency.
Visiting Fellows
Professor Luis Seco
Professor Seco’s core activity is bringing artificial intelligence into today’s sustainability challenges to build a new and better world.
His has extensive expertise in developing University-Industry relationships, which he has done since 1996. In October 2007, he won the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Synergy Award for Innovation. In 2011, he was admitted Caballero de la Orden del Mérito Civil (Knight of the Order of Civil Merit), an award from the Government of Spain for his application of mathematics to foresee economic cycles.
Professor Seco ’s career started at Princeton University in 1985, and landed at the University of Toronto in 1992 after a short stay at the California Institute of Technology. Today, he holds adjunct appointments at Renmin University in Beijing, Florida International University, the Technical University of Munich, the University of Zurich and Kutaisi International University.
Professor of Mathematics at the University of Toronto and Director of Risklab in Toronto, Canada.
Dr Siddiq Anwar
Dr. Anwar believes in using data-driven decision-making in healthcare and process optimization to improve overall healthcare outcomes. He spearheaded the digitalization of the End Stage Renal Disease program in Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA), the digitalization of the Complete Acute Kidney Injury Management pipeline at SSMC and helped set up the Paired Kidney Exchange program in UAE. This work has been awarded by HIMSS, the Arab Hospitals Federation, and the Patient Safety Conference. He also was awarded the best nephrologist in the UAE award by Health Magazine in 2023.
He is collaborating with colleagues from Khalifa University and the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence to develop an AI Platform, “RenAIssance” to help improve Acute Kidney Injury outcomes. This team won the grand prize in a hackathon organized by Ericsson & UAE Ministry of Economy and was a semifinalist in the 3C-AI4H Bowl-Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine (I.AIM), at Northwestern University, USA. In addition, he has received a Research grant from the Department of Health, Abu Dhabi.
Consultant Nephrologist and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City (SSMC) and Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Dr Mecit Can Emre Simsekler
Associate Professor in the Department of Management Science & Engineering, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Dr. Simsekler is an Associate Professor and the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Khalifa University of Science and Technology. Additionally, he serves as a visiting scholar at Boston Children’s Hospital (Teaching Hospital of Harvard Medical School) and the University College London (UCL) School of Management. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge. During his PhD, he was a visiting researcher in the Center for Medical Innovation System at the University of Tokyo and the Center for Patient Safety and Quality Research at Boston Children’s Hospital. After completing his PhD, he worked as a Research Associate at the UCL School of Management.
Dr Simsekler’s research interests span healthcare analytics and management to improve operational and safety outcomes and accelerate risk-based decision-making. Leveraging business analytics, design thinking, and systems thinking, his current research focuses on AI-driven digital transformation in building high-value, human-centered, and sustainable health systems. Dr Simsekler is the recipient of the 2022 Outstanding Global Faculty Advisor Recognition Award from the IISE, the world's largest professional society for industrial and systems engineers.