Profiles

Mohammed is currently a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering program (ECE) at KAUST. He received his Master degree in Advanced Control and Systems Engineering with Distinction from UOM, Manchester. He has experience in academia working as Lecturer and worked as Head of the committee of the Engineering Training Program. He also worked as Project Engineer in Saudi Electrical Company in the power plant project PP13 carried by SEC.

His research interests span various topics in systems and control engineering, Robotics, and fault detection and diagnosis.

Mritunjay Kumar is a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, under the supervision of Prof. Xiaohang Li. Before joining KAUST, he earned his Master of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Dhanbad. His research focuses on developing advanced wide-bandgap semiconductor devices for extreme-temperature power electronics applications, addressing challenges such as threshold voltage instability and high gate leakage currents in GaN HEMTs through innovative materials and gate design techniques.

Mritunjay has made significant contributions to the field of power electronics for extreme temperature, as evidenced by publications in reputed journals such as Applied Physics Letters (APL) and Japanese Journal of Applied Physics (JJAP). His achievements include the development of a high-threshold voltage (7.4 V) enhancement-mode GaN HEMT and the implementation of bi-layer gate stacks for stable operation at temperatures up to 450°C. His work also explores heterogeneous integration, such as combining GaN HEMTs with indium oxide-based driver circuits and gallium oxide transistors, demonstrating stable operation in harsh environments.

Mritunjay’s research interest includes Optoelectronics, and III-Nitrides Power semiconductor devices.

Olga Krestinskaya received her M.Sc. and B.S. degrees from Nazarbayev University in 2016 and 2018. Olga was working as a Teaching Assistant (2017-2018) and Research Assistant (2016-2019) and was involved in several projects connected to hardware implementation of neuromorphic architectures. In 2018, Olga was undergoing a research internship under the Erasmus Student Mobility Program in  FCT/UNL NOVA University in Portugal. In 2017 and 2019, Olga was an intern in Kaust under the supervision of Prof. Khaled Salama.

Olga is the recipient of the 2019 IEEE CASS Pre-doctoral award. She has published several high quality works in the area of analog memristive neural network designs including CNN, LSTM, BNN and HTM. She is a reviewer and author to several top IEEE journals and conferences.

 AI, IoT, Wireless Communications.

Control systems and power systems engineering. Modeling, simulation, analysis and design of solutions applied to power system stability and control. Optimal and data-driven approaches to the integration of renewable energy resources.

Rajat Kumar is a Ph.D. student at the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. He received the Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Hamirpur, India, in 2019 and the Master of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi, India, in 2021.

His research interests encompass energy harvesting, nanoelectronics, beyond-CMOS devices, and VLSI design.

Roman received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Faculty of Physics, Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Since 2018, he has been pursuing a Ph.D. degree at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. His research mainly focuses on gas discharge plasma at atmospheric pressure and its application. Roman's academic advisor is Professor Deanna Lacoste.

Shahd Shami is a Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at KAUST, specializing in robotics and control systems. Before that, she worked as a Teaching Assistant at King Abdulaziz University, where she gained hands-on experience in AI projects and technology solutions. Shahd received her M.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from KAUST, focusing on machine learning and robot planning, and her B.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia.

Shahd's research focuses on developing adaptive and intelligent control mechanisms to enhance robotic systems' autonomy and efficiency in dynamic environments. She combines classical control theory with advanced machine learning algorithms to create models that improve robotic performance, adaptability, and interaction with uncertain environments. Areas of interest: • Adaptive control systems for robotics • Machine learning integration in control mechanisms • Advanced sensor technologies for robotics • System integration and implementation of AI solutions • Robotics education and training