Abdullah Almojel

Dr, Abdullah Almojel joined KAUST in August 2008 as Vice President, University Relations. In December 2009, he was named Vice President, University Development reporting directly to the Executive Vice President of Finance and Administration. Dr. Almojel is an engineer and university educator with 11 years of experience as a cultural ambassador and manager of international students. He has taught at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where he holds an associate professorship in computer engineering. He had previously served as department chairman. Dr. Almojel joined KAUST from the Saudi Ministry of Higher Education, where he served for eight years as Deputy Minister for Cultural Relations. In that post, he organized scientific and cultural relations between Saudi universities and institutions, including top international book fairs and exhibitions. In addition, he was the General Supervisor of the King Abdullah Scholarship Program, which grants scholarships to more than 18,000 Saudi students who wish to study at top universities abroad. Dr. Almojel managed two dozen Saudi Arabian cultural missions and attachés overseas where Saudi students abroad report. Dr. Almojel earned his doctorate in computer engineering and science at The George Washington University (1997), in Washington, D.C., where he majored in computer engineering and architecture. His dissertation was partially supported by the Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences (CESDIS) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He holds a masters in Computer Science from the University of Denver (1991), in the United States, and a bachelor's in Computer Engineering from King Saud University (1987) in Saudi Arabia. He was a Visiting Research Scholar at Advanced Parallel Architecture Lab of George Washington University (May 1997 – June 1998). He has published more than 40 papers and technical research reports in peer-reviewed publications, and given more than 80 technical and professional presentations, lectures, seminars, and invited talks in many prestigious international and regional conferences and symposiums, forums, and workshops. His research interests are similar to KAUST’s areas of research, including high-performance computing, parallel processing and architecture, performance evaluation and workload characterization, Grand Challenge N-body problems, interdisciplinary information systems, intelligent multimedia database systems, Internet computing, and e-government applications and technologies. He was heavily involved on several Joint NSF-NASA Initiatives on Evaluation (JNNIE) projects under the auspices of the NASA High-Performance Computing and Communications Program. In one research effort, Dr. Almojel evaluated the performance and architecture of parallel supercomputers such as the Cray T3D and C90, Intel Paragon, IBM SP-2, and Thinking Machines CM-5. He was a Research Assistant at Center of Excellence in Space Data & Information Sciences (CESDIS), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (1993 –1997). Dr. Almojel holds many academic and scientific honors including a Scientific Award from the Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences (CESDIS) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He is a fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Salzburg Global Seminar, and the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. He is also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the IEEE Computer Society, Association for Computing Machinery, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), the Saudi Computer Society (SCS), and the Saudi Society for Technology and Development Transfer (SSTDT).