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Yearly Archives: 2022
CSE Faculty Awarded NPRP-C Grant from QNRF
A major cluster grant titled “The Future of Digital Citizenship in Qatar: A Socio-Technical Approach” from the Qatar National Research Fund (QRNF) was awarded to HBKU, Qatar University, and many other partners to lead a multi-entity, interdisciplinary project on digital citizenship in the Arab region.
The $3.8m four-year grant was awarded under QRNF’s National Priorities Research Program-Cluster (NPRP-C) and enables collaboration between 10 entities from academia and industry.
Dr. Raian Ali, Professor in Information and Computing Technology at HBKU, will lead the cluster as program director with six projects that will focus on building an observatory for trends and common topics on social media, web-based tools, educational materials, and research into digital literacy and well-being, gender equity, social inclusion, behavior-based approaches to security and safety, detecting and limiting propaganda and other areas.
Qatar University is leading two projects by Dr. Khaled Khan and Dr. Osama Halabi from the Computer Science and Engineering Department, College of Engineering.
The project led by Dr. Khaled Khan is titled ”Security and Safety as a Behavior”. It is a collaborative project between Qatar University, HBKU, and Bournemouth University. The project will research a behavior-based approach to security and safety. Investigate hacking and social engineering techniques that are successful in the Arab world and propose socio-technical approaches to enhance resilience to manipulators online and encourage reporting. The solutions are based on the approaches of behavior rehearsal, simulation, and social norms.
The project is led by Dr. Osama Halabi is titled “GESI by Design”. It is a collaborative project between Qatar University and HBKU. The project will study how to mitigate issues related to Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) in social media in Qatar and the Arab world and increase awareness of them. The team will use digital nudging techniques based on annotation and a bespoke set of reactions and emojis and devise tools to facilitate a structured dialogue. The aim is to encourage a more civilized and inclusive language and interaction.
The cluster is supported by a wide range of key stakeholders in Qatar including the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Qatar National Library, Msheireb Museums, Qatar Finance Centre, and Fadaat Media, who will provide facilities and enrich the knowledge transfer.
Announcement of CSE Senior Project Contest AY21-22 Winners
The winners of our department’s senior project contest for 2021-2022 academic year have just been announced. A showcase of spectacular SDP projects took place on May 10, 2022 at QU. The event included live demos and posters’ presentations. Internal examiners and judges from industry evaluated the projects.
Computer Science Winners
- First Place: Yousseif Elshahawy, Mohanad Mohamed, and Hesham Zaky, with a project titled “Harassment Heat-Map“. Supervisor is Dr. Mohamad Saleh.
- Second Place: Dana Hasan, Maryam Al-Malki, and Maryam Arab, with a project titled “Sakkin: Taking Real Estate To The Next Level“. Supervisor is Dr. Sayed ElSayed.
- Third Place: Fatma Al-Mansouri, Shaymaa Al-Mohssen, Fatima Al-Khulaifi, and Muneera Al-Naimi, with a project titled “Share“. Supervisor is Dr. Khalid Khan.
Computer Engineering Winners
- First Place: Muraam Abdel-Ghani, Hoda Helmy, and Somaya Eltanbouly, with a project titled “Assistive Telexistence System Using Motion Blending“. Supervisor is Dr. Osama Halabi, co-supervisor is Dr. Mohammed Al-Sada .
- Second Place: Mohamad Bahri, Abdelrahman Soliman, Mohamed Daniel Bin, and Mohamad Izham, with a project titled “AirEye: UAV-Based Intelligent DRL Mobile Target Visitation“. Supervisor is Dr. Amr Mohamed.
- Third Place: Aya Elsayed, Sofia Basha, and Myesha Hoque, with a project titled: “Automatic Electronic Gate System Using BLE Beacons of EHTERAZ“. Supervisor is Dr. Qutaibah Malluhi .
Well done CSE SDP teams; everyone is a winner indeed!
CSE conducted the annual industrial board meeting
The Computer Science and Engineering conducted the annual industrial advisory board meeting. Stakeholders included entities from Qatar Computing Research Institute, Qatar Mobility Innovations Center, Internal Security Force Lekhwiya, Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, Qatar Fuel Additives Company, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Qatar Science & Technology Park, Qatar Armed Forces, Joaan Bin Jassim Joint Command and Staff College, Ministry of Transport and Communications, Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Council of Ministers General Secretariat, and Qatar National Bank. This meeting is conducted annually as part of the program improvement cycle process to hear the important feedback of the stakeholders and employers regarding the programs on offer in the department and the quality of our graduates.
The head of department chaired the session and showcased the latest program changes and developments over the past academic year. Some items discussed on the agenda were the recent changes to improve the quality of the graduates and the selection of elective courses in both Computer Engineering and Computer Science programs on offer.
The department is keen to studying and implementing these suggested changes over the next academic year and looks forward to strengthening collaboration with the industrial entities involved.
Huawei Opens AI Lab at Qatar University
Qatar University (QU) has partnered with Huawei to open an AI Lab as part of the Huawei ICT Academy at the university. The collaboration is a further boost to Qatar’s economy, whose National Vision 2030 recognizes talent’s central role in forging a prosperous society.
The Lab was officially opened by Dr. Khalid Al Ali who delivered a keynote speech, as well as Dr. Khalid Naji, Dean of the College of Engineering, QU, and Liam Zhao, CEO, Huawei Gulf North, in the presence of other senior Huawei executives, dignitaries and faculty. The group later toured the state-of-the-art lab equipped with the latest technologies.
The Huawei ICT Academy Lab will train QU students using Huawei equipment to acquire high-level Huawei Certifications in a real environment. It will also support university research programs, provide cutting-edge technology and platforms, and inspire innovation by conducting industry and university collaborative projects and research.
Dr. Khalid Al Ali, assistant undersecretary for higher education in the Ministry of Education and Higher Education said, “We are highly encouraged to see our universities and the private sector coming together to advance education. We recognize that the public sector alone would struggle to meet the talent demand of the digital economy. But forging such partnerships elevate the skillsets of our youth and, in turn, helps build a competitive economy that can respond faster to market demand and global trends.”
Dr. Khalid Naji, Dean of the College of Engineering at QU, said, “As our country’s leading university, we are at the forefront of Qatar’s efforts to develop a highly-skilled labor force. Partnering with Huawei exposes our students to the latest advances in ICT while equipping them with real-world skills that meet the demands of a digital economy. We will continue to explore further areas of cooperation as demand for digital skills accelerates.”
Liam Zhao, CEO of Huawei Gulf North, said, “Huawei has a long-term and mutually beneficial relationship with the State of Qatar and various public and private organizations. The opening of the AI Lab deepens this relationship while helping the country deepen its ICT talent ecosystem. We are confident the ICT Academy and the AI Lab will make a significant contribution in enabling the country to attain its objectives.”
As a leading global ICT solution provider, Huawei advocates for an open, shared ICT talent ecosystem that benefits all parties. Over the past nine years, Huawei has built a talent supply chain covering the entire learning, certification, and employment process by deepening the cooperation mechanism between universities and enterprises, promoting industry development, and innovating talent development models based on enterprise requirements.
CSE Faculty Awarded 2 NPRP-S Grants from QNRF
Our CSE department was awarded 2 National Priorities Research Project-Standard (NPRP-S) grants from Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) in their 14th cycle. This cycle was so competitive that Qatar University was awarded only 14 projects; 5 of which are awarded to the College of Engineering. The two awarded projects are led by Dr. Tamer Elsayed and Dr. Abdulla Al-Ali.
The project led by Dr. Abdulla Al-Ali is titled “Defense Against Hardware Intrinsic Attacks in Resource-Constrained COTS based Traditional and Futuristic Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT).” It is a collaborative grant between QU and Tennessee Tech University in collaboration with the Ministry of Interior, Qatar. The PIs from QU are Dr. Abdelkarim Erradi and Dr. Uvais Qidwai, while the Tennessee Tech University PIs are Dr. Syed Rafay Hasan, Dr. Tarek Elfouly and Dr. Terry Guo. The project revolves around three main objects: (a) The development of hardware intrinsic security mechanisms for Resource Constrained (RC) Commercial off the shelf (COTS) based traditional IoT systems, (b) Investigating the vulnerability of hardware intrinsic security mechanisms for RC-COTS based futuristic AIoT system, and (c) developing a testbed implementation to examine real world scenarios to make the proposed work technology ready.
The project led by Dr. Tamer Elsayed is titled “Dimension-Specific Automated Scoring of Arabic Language Writing Proficiency“. The project’s team is entirely based in Qatar, having Dr. Houda Bouamor from CMU-Q and Dr. Walid Massoud from QU, with complementary expertise in Arabic natural language processing, information retrieval, applied machine learning, and psychometrics and standardized testing. The goal of the project is to build an automated scoring system for the quality of students’ writing abilities (on different aspects) in standard Arabic exams (similar to IELTS or TOEFL English exams). The proposed system, which is potentially the first of its kind in the Arab region, will potentially help in assessing the students’ writing proficiency in Arabic exams offered at QU as well as several high schools at Qatar Foundation. The project is funded for 3 years.
CSE Faculty Speaks at Smart City Expo Doha 2022
Prof. Abdelaziz Bouras participated as speaker in the The Smart City Expo Doha 2022, organized by TASMU and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in Msheireb, Doha, on 29th and 30th of March. He was one of the speakers of the panel titled “Unleashing the potential of disruptive technologies in urban management”. The panel addressed how different enabling technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing or Internet of Things, will depict the transformation of urban management in the coming years and decades. These trends point out potential gains in terms of robustness, security, flexibility, adaptability, and reliability of public infrastructures running in cities and services delivered to urban dwellers. Unleashing this potential is not only a matter of technological availability and readiness, but also a mix of factors related to project financing and management, public procurement procedures, public-private collaborations, and partnerships, etc. The panel also explored the landscape of hurdles and barriers, and how to overcome them to turn promises of disruption into reality.