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Biography

Research-driven professional with a distinctive combination of leadership, research & development, and education in the area of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. Solid publication in top-ranked conferences and journals, teaching at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, and working on various R&D projects. Proven ability to manage research teams, develop effective research programs. Experience with most AI paradigms from old to newest ones. With Canadian and Moroccan Citizenships, exposure to both Arabic-African and Western education systems and cultures. Keynote speaker as well as a visiting professor, founding president of the ALESM engineering language society as well as leading regional and international funded projects. Having presented to the minister of higher education the project to setting up the Moroccan national centre for AI.

 

Research interests in artificial intelligence and data science including Machine & Deep Learning, Multi-agent systems, Cognitive systems, NLP, NLP frameworks, Linguistic Resources and ontologies, Morphology, POS Tagging, Sentiment Analysis, Opinion Mining, Summarization, IR and QA systems, and Arabic/Dialect processing.

Education

1995-1998:        Ph.D. in Computer Science (Laval University, Canada)
                 Title: Interaction Model Based on the Agents’ Point of View
                 Key words: Artificial Intelligence, Multi-agent Systems, Negotiation, Computational Linguistics.

1992-1994:         M.S. Computer Science (Laval University, Canada)
                 Title: Representing Knowledge in Real Time Expert Systems Using Temporal Graphs: Application to a Driving System
                 Key words:Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems, Real Time Reasoning, Temporal Reasoning .

1988-1992:         System’s Analyst (INSEA, Rabat, Morocco)
                 Title: Generalisation- Based Memory Model
                 Key words: Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science.

1985-1988:        Baccalauréat in Mathematical-Sciences (Al Khawarizmy, Casablanca, Morocco).

Key Research Accomplishments

  • Founded the “Language Engineering and Learning Modeling (ALELM)” research group at the Mohammed 5th University in Rabat, in 2006
  • PI of SAFAR, one of the top Arabic NLP frameworks in the world
  • PI on several linguistic datasets distributed by CLARIN, ELRA and LDC
  • PI on eSemantics, a semantic and bilingual information retrieval system (As knowledge transfer for the Synto Canadian IT company)
  • PI on an automatic classification tool for administrative documents written in Arabic and French (As knowledge transfer for a Moroccan administration)
  • Co-PI of the second release of the official Arabic wordnet
  • Co-PI on Amine platform for the development of intelligent cognitive and multi-agent systems
  • Created a prototype for OCTOPUS© project using LabView

Academic Experience

Full Professor

  • EMI, Mohammed Vth University in Rabat, Morocco            2016 – Present

Assistant / Associate Professor

  • EMI, Mohammed Vth University, Rabat, Morocco                2005 – 2015
  • IERA, Mohamed Vth University, Rabat, Morocco.                 2003 – 2004
  • ENSAT Abdelmalek Saadi University, Tangier, Morocco     1999 – 2003

 Leadership

  • Support the development of new computer science programs while supervising, advising, and mentoring graduate/undergraduate students
  • Participation in university committees
  • Founding president of a language engineering society
  • Founding and leader of the AI research lab at the Mohammadia School of Engineering
  • Cultivate strong relations with students, staff, and educational administrators
  • Led wide-ranging research projects

Research

  • Led various academic and R&D projects
  • Secure research funding by composing proposals
  • Enable the organization of seminars, lectures, local and international events
  • Design various research programs in artificial intelligence, data science and multi-agent systems

Teaching

  • Long experience in teaching in the field of Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Data Science for both core and advanced undergraduate and postgraduate levels
  • Ability to link research and teaching
  • Most courses ACM-IEEE computing curricula compliant
  • Active contribution to all accreditations in new curriculum in the computer science department of Mohammadia School of Engineering
  • Experience with classroom technologies for online learning and contribution to new teaching materials

Other Professional Activities

  • Executive education within the Intelcia group, “Artificial Intelligence, Identification of use cases and impact in the company”, January 2023
  • Member of the governing board of the Mohammadia School of Engineers, 2021 – Present
  • Head of the “Language Engineering & Learning Modeling (ALELM)” research group, at Mohammed 5th University in Rabat, Morocco, 2006 – Present
  • Co-Founder & past-president of the Arabic Language Engineering Society in Morocco, 2012 – 2018
  • Consultant, eVision INC., Canada, 2007 – 2012
  • Computer Science Consultant for the “Progress” Project, USAID, 2001

Career Note

  • Online adjunct professor at the open institute of technology OPIT (2022 – 2024)
  • Adjunct professor at the College of Engineering & Information Technology | University of Maryland, Baltimore County UMBC, USA (2022 – 2023)
  • Associate/Full professor | Mohammed Vth University in Rabat, Rabat, Morocco (2003 – Present)
  • Adjunct professor at the school of science and engineering | Al Akhawayn University, Morocco (2002 – 2003)
  • Assistant professor | Abdelmalek Saadi University, Tangier, Morocco (1999 – 2003)
  • Head of the Computer Science Department | EDHEC, Casablanca, Morocco (1999)
  • Adjunct Lecturer at the Computer Science Department | Laval University, Canada (1997 – 1998)
  • Research Assistant | Laval University, Canada
    Professional Computer Science Specialist for the OCTOPUS© project | Laval University, Canada (1994)
  • Teaching Assistant (Computer Science Department) | Laval University, Canada (1993 – 1996)
  • End of engineering Studies Training | INSEA (National School of Statistics & Applied Economics), Rabat (1992)
  • Internship Training | Renault Véhicule Industriels, Lyon, France (1991)

R&D Funded Projects

PI

  • SAFAR: Framework Architecture For Arabic – http://arabic.emi.ac.ma/safar/
  • ASC project: Speech MSA Corpora by Moroccan and Tunisian recorders
    • Funder: Samsung Electronics Levant/Jordan (April 2016)
  • SEWAC project: Development of an Arabic ontology
    • Funder: Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization ALECSO (2012-2014)
  • eSemantics, a semantic and bilingual information retrieval system (As knowledge transfer for the Synto Canadian IT company)
    • Funder: Synto – Canada (February 2012)
  • Project ArabClassify: automatic classification tool for administrative documents written in Arabic and French (As knowledge transfer for a Moroccan administration)
    • Funder: Ministry of Finance – Morocco (February 2011)
  • Arabic Question/Answering – http://arabic.emi.ac.ma/ArabicQA/
    • Funder: Mohammed Vth University – Agdal for the project “Developing an Arabic QA system”, (September 2011)
    • Funder: Moroccan-Spanish Cooperation Commission for the project, “Arabic Question/Answering System using intelligent Agents”, (Januray 2008)
  • iLearnArabic: Arabic Learning applications – http://arabic.emi.ac.ma:8080/iLearnArabic/

Co-PI

  • MED-AI project: Exchange program between Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany and Mohammed V University in Rabat
    • Funder: DAAD – German Academic Exchange Service, (June – December 2023)
  • ASCENSION project : AI Scheme for Capturing Employment’s Newsworthy Streams, Insights, Outlooks & Needs
    • Funder: Al-Khawarizmi Research Support Program, Moroccan Ministry of Digitization (January 2021- January 2024)
  • UBSMI project: Understanding Bilingual Social Media Information
    • Funder: Moroccan-American Fulbright Award (July-October 2021)
  • Project: Using the SAFAR platform to analyze Arabic texts in the context of big data
    • Funder: University of Montreal, visiting professor at the computer science department (September 2014)
  • IAWN project: Development of the Iraki AWN
    • Funder: Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania (USA), (Marsh 2012)
  • The official international Arabic Wordnet – http://globalwordnet.org/arabic-wordnet/
    • Funder: Moroccan-Spanish Cooperation Commission for the project, “Extension and enrichment of the Arabic Wordnet as an Arabic linguistic resource”, (January 2010)
  • Amine platform for the development of intelligent cognitive and multi-agent systems – http://amine-platform.sourceforge.net/