Profiles

Karim is a graduate from Bauman Moscow State Technical University. He received a specialist degree in a field of electrical engineering (2014 – 2020), with a focus on radars and wireless communications. He worked at part-time job as embedded systems and DSP engineer for 2.5 years. After that he had internship in summer of 2019 at Huawei Russian Research Institute (RRI) and after graduating from university, he worked at Huawei RRI for 1 year. During his job he improved receiver’s sensitivity applying some convex and non-convex optimization approaches and provide some dimensionality reduction approaches for system identification.

Nowadays Karim works in topics related to Joint Sensing And Communication (JSAC), quantum computing and communications over unlicensed spectrum.

Adaptive algorithms in wireless communications, Radar signal processing and machine learning. Quantum computing.

Khalil Moussi holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), with a thesis on miniaturized drug-delivery systems. Most of his research since has focused on medical and biomedical devices — microneedles, MEMS-based micropumps, and implantable and catheter-based delivery systems. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in KAUST's CEMSE Division, where his work includes a second-generation microneedle balloon catheter for circumferential endovascular drug delivery and an ultra-flexible magneto-elastic diaphragm for low-power actuation applications.

Khalil is a co-inventor on a granted US and WO patent for a microneedle balloon catheter. This work earned a Gold Medal and the WIPO Prize at the 49th International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva (2024). Khalil is a co-inventor of a separate granted US patent for a miniaturized drug-delivery system. He has authored five peer-reviewed journal papers, two as cover articles, and twelve conference papers.

Beyond research, Khalil has worked in innovation and digital-transformation consulting, including roles at Orange Innovation Tunisia (Sofrecom) and the Sfax Industry 4.0 Center. He is fluent in Arabic, English, and French.

Khalil's technical expertise spans the full development cycle of miniaturized medical devices: microneedle design and fabrication (transdermal, intradermal, and catheter-mounted), MEMS-based micropumps, and implantable and wearable drug-delivery systems, supported by hands-on skills in cleanroom microfabrication, 3D printing, and COMSOL/SolidWorks/MATLAB simulation. He also has practical experience translating early-stage device research into protected IP, having drafted and co-invented two granted patent families. Beyond the lab, his interests extend to digital transformation and Industry 4.0 consulting — helping manufacturers and organizations bridge emerging technology with practical implementation — and to mentoring early-career researchers and engineers, having supervised multiple graduate and undergraduate students through their thesis and research projects.

Mattia Soldan is a final-year Ph.D. candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering at KAUST, where he is advised by Prof. Bernard Ghanem. His research lies at the intersection of computer vision and natural language processing, with a focus on scalable and efficient algorithms for semantic video understanding and retrieval. His work spans task-specific deep learning architectures, dataset creation, and efficient visual encoding pipelines. Mattia is passionate about building intelligent systems that connect visual content with language and advancing research that bridges fundamental understanding with practical impact.

Mattia's research focuses on video and language understanding and especially on how to leverage mutual information to solve specific tasks as Single Video Moment Retrieval and Video Corpus Moment Retrieval.

Research Interests

Motasem is interested in computer vision, machine learning, and continual learning.

Dr. Nasir Alfaraj is a KAUST Ibn Rushd Fellow at the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, in 2019. Prior to his doctoral studies, he earned his B.Sc. (2013) from Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA, and his M.Sc. (2015) from KAUST. Dr. Alfaraj is currently a Research Associate with the Helmy Group, and his research interests encompass the growth, fabrication, and characterization of CMOS-compatible semiconductor nanostructures and devices for nanophotonic applications, utilizing hybrid metallic architectures. He is an IEEE Senior Member.

Nasir's research investigated the design and clean-environment fabrication of solid-state and optoelectronic devices, including field-effect transistors and light-emitting diodes. His research expertise spans the areas of flexible electronics; optoelectronic device growth, fabrication, and characterization; and free-space optical communication. His research interests included Growth, fabrication, and characterization of group-III-nitride-based nanostructures for next-generation devices, Semiconductor physics and Quantum mechanics.