Dr. Halima Bensmail | Hamad Bin Khalifa University

Dr. Halima Bensmail

Principal Scientist
Joint Professor

Office location

1116, First Floor, HBKU Research Development Complex

Dr. Halima Bensmail

Principal Scientist
Joint Professor

Educational Qualifications

Ph.D. in Biostatistics/Statistics

MSc in Statistical Machine Learning

Entity

Qatar Computing Research Institute

College of Science and Engineering

Divison

Qatar Center for Artificial Intelligence

Information & Computing Technology

Biography

Dr. Halima Bensmail obtained a PhD at the Pierre & Marie Currie University. She spent three years at the University of Washington and FHCRC as a postdoc and was a researcher in the Data Theory Group, University of Leiden. Dr. Halima held the positions of assistant and associate professor at the University of Tennessee and Virginia Medical School. Currently, she is a principal scientist at the Qatar Computing Research Institute and a joint associate professor at the College of Science and Engineering at HBKU. She is also a visiting professor at TAMU-Q.

Dr. Halima published more than 120 peer reviewed papers in high impact journals (Nature Communications, Nucleic Acids Research, Genome Research, Briefings in Bioinformatics, Bioinformatic among many). She has received numerous prestigious honors, taught numerous courses in Qatar, the US, and Europe, and mentored numerous Master's and PhD students. Dr. Halima has been Co-PI on several research grants in Qatar and abroad. She is a mentor for a $2 millions newly created center awarded by USDA grant agency to the obesity center in Texas Tech and serves as a reviewer for the NIH and NSF and is a board member of Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Technology Foundation, Davos and an AdCom representative of IEEE EMBs in MENA.

 

Ph.D. in Biostatistics/Statistics

University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris VI

1996

MSc in Statistical Machine Learning

La Sorbonne University

1991

B.S. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics

University of Sciences Mohamed V

1989

  • Statistical Machine Learning
  • Bioinformatics-Computational Biology
  • Statistics-Biostatistics
  • Artificial Intelligence

Senior and Principal Scientist

QCAI, Qatar Computing Research Institute

2011 - Present

Joint Associate Professor

College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University

2016 - Present

Associate Professor

Virginia Public Health Program, Eastern Virginia Medical school (EVMS) Virginia, USA

2006 - 2009

Assistant and Associate Professor

Department of Statistics and Operation Management Sciences (SOMS), University of Tennessee, Knoxville USA

2000 - 2006

Scientist

Data Theory Center, University of Leiden, Netherlands

1997 - 2000

Scientist

Modeling and Data Science for Population Studies, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, USA

1996 - 1997

  • 2016: Best Contribution, Information Complexity in Statistics, Cappadocia, Turkey. 
  • 2013: Best Research Team of the Year 2013 Award, Qatar National Research Fund, Doha, Qatar.
  • 2011: Best Researcher in Computing, Qatar Foundation, Doha, Qatar.
  • 2000: ONRST Postdoctoral Fellowship, Office of Naval Research Science and Technology, Arlington, Virginia, U.S.A.
  • 1996: Best Research Award in Statistics for Classification, International Federation for Classification (IFCS), Rome, Italy.
  • 1994: Graduate Fellowship, Institute National for Research in Informatics and Automatics (INRIA), Versailles, France.