Smart Health

Professor Gianluca Setti joined KAUST in 2022 from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, where he served as a Professor of Electronics for Signal and Data Processing in the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications (DET). He also served as the Rector’s Delegate on Research Quality Evaluation.

He received his Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science ('97) from the University of Bologna, Italy. From 1997 to 2017, he was an assistant, associate and full professor of Circuit Theory and Analog Electronics at the University of Ferrara, Italy. Dr. Setti is the first serving non-US Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the IEEE, the flagship journal of the Institute, a role he has held since 2019. He has also held the IEEE Vice Presidency for Publication Services and Products for two terms. During this period, he ensured ethics in using bibliometric indicators for evaluating the impact of individual scientists' research. Additionally, he served on IEEE's board of directors, where he addressed the impact of open access mandates on IEEE members.

He received the 1998 Caianiello Prize for the best Italian Ph.D. thesis on neural networks. He also received the 2013 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) Meritorious Service Award and was an IEEE CASS Distinguished Lecturer in 2004–2005 and 2015–2016. In addition to publishing circa 320 scientific articles in journals and conference proceedings, as well as four books, he has received best paper awards in three different IEEE Transactions and six best paper awards or nominations at major conferences, including the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems and the Design, Automation and Test in Europe.

The nature of Setti's research interests and approaches is multidisciplinary: they include nonlinear circuits, statistical signal processing, electromagnetic compatibility, compressive sensing, biomedical circuits and systems, power electronics, design and implementation of IoT nodes, as well as machine learning techniques for anomaly detection and predictive maintenance.

Professor Salama received his B.S. (Hons.) degree from Cairo University, Egypt, in 1997. He obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, U.S., in 2000 and 2005, respectively.

The principal investigator of the KAUST Sensors Lab, Salama joined the University in 2009. From 2009 to 2011, he served as the founding program chair for Electrical Engineering at KAUST. Before joining KAUST, he worked as an assistant professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, U.S., from 2005 to 2009.

Dr. Salama—a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)—has authored 360 articles and holds 50 patents on low-power mixed-signal circuits for intelligent, fully integrated sensors and nonlinear electronics, particularly memristor devices.

His work on complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensors for molecular detection has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He is also the co-founder of Ultrawave Labs, a biomedical imaging company.

Salama received the Stanford-Berkeley Innovators Challenge Award in Biological Science.

Professor Salama’s research interests cover various interdisciplinary aspects of electronic circuit design and semiconductor fabrication. He is actively engaged in developing devices, circuits, systems and algorithms to enable inexpensive analytical platforms for a variety of industrial, environmental and biomedical applications.

Salama’s most recent research has focused on developing neuromorphic circuits for brain emulation.

Nazek El-Atab is an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and the principal investigator of the Smart, Advanced Memory Devices and Applications (SAMA) Lab. El-Atab joined the University in October 2017, having obtained her B.Sc. in computer and communications engineering in 2012 from Hariri Canadian University, Lebanon, and her M.Sc. in microsystems engineering in 2014 and Ph.D. in interdisciplinary engineering in 2017 from the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, UAE, under a cooperative program with MIT, and funded by the US Office of Naval Research.
 
At KAUST, El-Atab has worked on several high-impact research projects focusing on designing and fabricating futuristic electronics. Her current research interest focuses on the design and development of smart multifunctional devices including in-memory sensing and computing, 4D printing of actuators with self-sensing capability, among others.
 
El-Atab is a Senior IEEE Member and currently serves as the Chair of the Western Saudi Arabia IEEE Electron Device Society Chapter. She is an IEEE Electron Devices Society Distinguished Lecturer. She is an associate editor-in-chief at Applied Nanoscience (Springer Nature) and associate editor at the Nano Select by Wiley and Microelectronics Engineering by Elsevier. She has published over 100 papers in international peer-reviewed scientific journals and conference proceedings, authored two book chapters, two books and holds seven filed U.S. patents.
 
El-Atab has received several significant awards for her research, including the 2015 For Women in Science Middle East Fellowship by L’Oreal-UNESCO, the 2017 International Rising Talents Award by L’Oreal-UNESCO, and was portrayed among the 2019 “Remarkable Women in Technology” by UNESCO. Prof. El-Atab was also selected to participate in the 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany, was selected among the 2020 UC Berkeley EECS Rising Stars, among the 10 Innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review Arabia in 2020, among the V60 Women in Sustainability by BCG, and as a “NEOM Changemaker” in 2021. 
 
Her research has been extensively covered in various international publications, including IEEE Spectrum, National Geographic, BBC, MIT Technology Review, and Sky News Arabia.

Professor El-Atab’s current research focuses on designing and developing innovative smart memory electronic devices for futuristic in-memory sensing and computing applications. El-Atab and her team aim to enhance an increasingly digitized world for emerging applications like artificial intelligence, IoT and augmented reality.

Ahmed M. Eltawil is a professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Program at KAUST. He joined the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) Division in 2019. At KAUST, he founded and directs the Communication and Computing Systems Laboratory (CCSL). Previously, he was a faculty member in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), U.S., from 2005 to 2019.

His research at the CCSL at KAUST focuses on efficient architectures for computing and communications systems, with an emphasis on wireless systems. This research spans several application domains, including low-power mobile systems, machine learning platforms, sensor networks, body area networks, and critical infrastructure networks.

An active participant in the academic community, Eltawil has served on the technical program and steering committees for numerous workshops, symposia and conferences focused on low-power computing and wireless communication system design. He is a recipient of several prestigious awards and grants, including the NSF CAREER grant for his research in low-power computing and communication systems.

He is a Senior Member, Distinguished Lecturer (2023/24) of the IEEE, and a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors. In 2021, he was recognized as "Innovator of the Year" by the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at UCI and received two US Congressional Recognition Awards for his pioneering work in wireless systems. Committed to a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach, Professor Eltawil is passionate about translational research, aiming to move practical innovations from the lab to societal applications.

Professor Eltawil’s current research focuses on efficient architectures for computing and communications systems and wireless networks, encompassing low-power mobile systems, sensor networks, body-area networks, cyber-physical systems and critical infrastructure networks.

His research examines the larger context of smart and connected systems where devices seamlessly integrate into our daily lives. His approach to research combines rigorous analysis with a robust experimental background that leverages insights obtained through simulations and corroborated by experiments. By finding innovative solutions to research problems, he aspires to offer practical approaches that can be readily adopted, resulting in significant societal benefits.

Atif Shamim received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Carleton University, Canada, in 2004 and 2009, respectively. He was an NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Graduate Scholar at Carleton University from 2007 to 2009 and an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow from 2009 to 2010 at the Royal Military College Canada and KAUST.

In 2006, he joined the VTT Micro-Modules Research Center (Oulu, Finland) as an invited researcher. In August 2010, he joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Program at KAUST, where he is currently a full professor, chair of the ECE Program, and principal investigator of the IMPACTS Lab.

His research work has earned numerous awards, including Best Paper Awards at IEEE ICMAC 2021, IEEE IMS 2016, IEEE MECAP 2016, and IEEE EuWiT 2008. He also received first prize in the IEEE IMS 2019 3MT Competition, the IEEE AP-S Design Competition 2022, and second prize in the IEEE IMS Design Competition 2024. Additionally, he was recognized with finalist or honorable mention awards in several prestigious competitions, including the IEEE AP-S Design Competition 2020 and the R.W.P. King Prize for journal papers in IEEE TAP 2017 and 2020. He has been selected as a Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE AP-S (2022–2024).

In addition to his research accolades, Professor Shamim’s work has been recognized for its broader impact across innovation, industry and entrepreneurship. He received the King’s Prize for the Best Innovation of the Year (2018) for his work on sensors for the oil industry. In 2008, he was honored with the Ottawa Centre of Research Innovation (OCRI) Researcher of the Year Award in Canada. His innovative Wireless Dosimeter earned the ITAC SMC Award at the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation TEXPO in 2007. He has also won several business-related honors, including first prize in Canada’s National Business Plan Competition and the OCRI Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2010.

Professor Shamim has been actively involved in contributing to the IEEE community through various technical, editorial, and leadership roles. He is a Fellow of IEEE and founded the first IEEE AP/MTT chapter in Saudi Arabia (2013). He served on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation (2013–2019), as a Guest Editor for an IEEE AWPL Special Issue (2019), and as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology (2020–2024). He has also participated in several IEEE Technical Committees, including those on Antenna Measurements (AP-S), Microwave Controls (MTT-S 13), and Additive Manufacturing (CRFID). 

He currently chairs the IEEE AP-S Technical Committee on Wireless Communication and serves as Vice Chair of the IEEE AP-S MGA Committee.

Professor Shamim's research focuses on innovative antenna designs and their integration strategies with circuits and sensors for flexible and wearable wireless sensing systems through a combination of CMOS and additive manufacturing technologies. Shamim is particularly interested in developing wearable wireless sensor systems to measure physiological parameters in real time.

Specific research interests include:

• Antenna-on-Chip (AoC) design, integration and efficiency enhancement strategies
• Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS)
  Additive manufacturing (Inkjet, Screen, and 3D printing)
• Wearable and disposable wireless sensors realized through printing technologies
• Mechanically flexible RF electronics and sensing systems
• Reconfigurable microwave components (magnetically controlled)
• Phase Change Materials (PCM) for low cost RF and mm-Wave switching applications
• Terahertz plasmonics antennas and their characterization techniques
   

Andrea Fratalocchi is a full professor in the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division at KAUST. He joined the University in January 2011 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2016. He is one of the founders of the CEMSE Division and the principal investigator of the Primalight Lab.

Before joining KAUST, Fratalocchi was a research fellow at Sapienza University of Rome under a KAUST Fellowship Award. From 2007 to 2009, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Sapienza University under a “New Talent” Award from the Enrico Fermi Research Center. He obtained a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering in 2003 and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2007 from the University of Roma Tre, Italy.

Fratalocchi’s career is marked by numerous accolades, including the GCC Enterprise Awards for Best Electrical Engineer of the Year in 2017, the Journal of Optics Outstanding Referee Award in 2017, the Nature Exceptional Referee Award in 2015, and an entry into the Guinness World Records for developing the “Darkest Material Made by Mankind” in 2015.

In 2019, he became a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IOP), a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA).

Fratalocchi has authored over 200 publications, including three books and six patents. He ranks in the top 2% of optics researchers worldwide, based on the standardized citation index compiled by PLOS.

Professor Fratalocchi is dedicated to advancing the field of physics and engineering. His research approach harnesses the potential of complex physical systems, characterized by many degrees of freedom, turning them from theoretical challenges into real-world technological solutions with diverse applications.

His research embraces a nonlinear paradigm, departing from traditional "cause and effect" or linear thinking. This approach finds applications in diverse areas such as chaos theory, rare events, brain functions, natural mimicry and camouflage, swarm's cooperative dynamics and intelligence.

Using disorder as a building block, he proposes novel, low-cost, scalable technologies that outperform current systems by several orders of magnitude.

As part of his engineering research, he has developed world-record-performing nanomaterials for concentrating solar power, steam generation, desalination, solar water splitting, solar and chemical fuel production for carbon-negative technologies, artificial intelligence optical neural networks for hyperspectral imaging and sensing, and machine-learning nanomaterials for wave control and bioimaging, including early disease detection of cancer and diabetes.

Tareq Al-Naffouri is a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Program at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Al-Naffouri earned a B.S. (Hons.) in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia, 

During the summers of 2005 and 2006, Al-Naffouri was a visiting scholar at the California Institute of Technology, U.S. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Southern California, U.S., in 2008.

An IEEE Senior Member, he has produced over 370 publications in journals and conference proceedings and 24 issued/pending patents. Al-Naffouri received the IEEE Education Society Chapter Achievement Award (2008), the Almarai Award for Innovative Research in Communication (2009) and the Abdul Hameed Shoman Prize for Innovative Research in IoT (2022).

Inference and Learning and their applications to Wireless Communications, Localization, Smart Cities, and Smart Health

Professor Sahika Inal is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering at KAUST. Her research lies at the intersection of organic electronics and biology, focusing on developing bioelectronic materials and devices that interface with living systems.

Her research aims to create tools that can translate biological signals into electronic signals, facilitating real-time monitoring and intervention for health applications, including tissue regeneration, diagnostics and drug delivery.

Prior to joining KAUST, Sahika Inal was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Bioelectronics at the Center of Microelectronics of Provence, École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne, Gardanne, France. She earned her B.Sc. in Textile Engineering from Istanbul Technical University in 2007 and her M.Sc. in Polymer Science in 2009 from a joint program involving TU, HU, FU, and the University of Potsdam in Berlin, Germany. In 2013, she completed her Ph.D. in Experimental Physics from the University of Potsdam, where her doctoral research focused on developing phase transition polymer/conjugated polyelectrolyte-based optical sensors for autonomous pathogen detection. Her M.Sc. work explored optical processes in organic solar cells using small molecule acceptors.

She hold nine patents and has delivered over 50 invited and keynote presentations at international conferences and universities across various countries. She is recognized as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and has received several awards, including ACS PMSE Young Investigator Award 2022, Beilby Medal and Prize 2022, and the Journal of Materials Chemistry Lectureship 2022. She has authored over 130 publications, and her work has been cited more than 13000 times with a 2024 h-index of 61.

Her innovative contributions help advance the field of bioelectronics and open new possibilities for understanding and interacting with biological systems.

Sahika’s expertise lies in polymer science and bioelectronic devices. She specializes in photophysics of conjugated polymers, characterization of polymer thin films, behavior of polymer films in aqueous environment, and the design of biosensors and actuators comprising conjugated polymers. She currently investigates ion/electron conduction in organic electronic materials and designs bioelectronic devices that can record/stimulate biological signals.  

Combining in-situ techniques to monitor ion and electron motion in films, fibers, and porous scaffolds of organic materials, her team aims to find the best performing materials, formulations, processing conditions and form factors for applications in electrolytes. 

These optimized materials are then applied to build specific devices (transistors, fuel cells, electrodes, electrochemical actuators or drug delivery devices) that can sense or stimulate biological signals.