Carnegie Mellon University Qatar

I am an Associate Teaching Professor of Finance at the Business Administration Program at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. My work brings together finance education, empirical research, and applied engagement with industry and the broader community. I focus on helping students and practitioners understand how financial decisions are made in real-world settings, particularly across corporate, investment, entrepreneurial, and international finance contexts. Alongside my teaching and research, I actively contribute to student research, community financial literacy initiatives, industry engagement, and institutional service at CMU Qatar.

Professor Chadi Aoun leads the Information Systems Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. He holds a PhD in Information Systems from the University of New South Wales, along with academic qualifications in business, education, law, and environmental science. Prof. Aoun’s academic experience includes appointments at the University of Technology Sydney, Macquarie University, and the University of Sydney, as well as visiting appointments at universities in the UK and Thailand. Prof. Aoun is a member of the Australian Computer Society and a member of the Association for Information Systems where he served as president of SIGGreen.

Dr. Jocelyn Bélanger is an Associate Teaching Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. He earned his master's degree and doctorate in Social Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also the author of the book entitled “The Three Pillars of Radicalization: Needs, Narratives, and Network.”

Dr. Bélanger is the Director of the CMUQ Violent Extremism and Environmental Sustainability Lab and the author of over 120 publications on the psychology of terrorism, (de)radicalization, self-sacrifice, motivated reasoning, and environmental psychology. He is the recipient of several awards including the APA Dissertation Research Award, the Milton Dean Havron Social Sciences Award, the APS Rising-Star Early-Career Research Award, and the Society of the Science of Motivation Early-Career Award. In March 2015, he was appointed by the City of Montreal to create the first deradicalization center in North America to tackle homegrown terrorism: The Center for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence.

Dr. Bélanger has written about his research for the public in Scientific American, World Politics Review, and the Sustainabilist. His research has also been featured in international media.

I am an Associate Teaching Professor and Associate Area Head of the Information Systems Department at CMU-Q. I am also affiliated with the CAMeL Lab (Computational Approaches to Modeling Language Lab) at NYU Abu Dhabi, where I collaborate with Nizar Habash on several projects.

My area of research is Artificial Intelligence, specifically Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics. I primarily focus on Arabic and Arabic dialect processing across orthography, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicons, and corpora. I also work on machine translation, dialogue systems, and multilingual AI. A strong theme in my research is using AI for social good, ensuring that technology contributes to equity, inclusion, and meaningful societal impact.

I earned my PhD in Computer Science (Computational Linguistics) from Paris-Sud University, France, where I worked on paraphrase alignment under the supervision of Anne Vilnat and Aurélien Max. Before that, I completed my M.Sc. in Computer Science at the Paris-Est Marne-La-Vallée University and my B.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of Manouba, Tunisia.

Since January 2025, I serve as the Secretary of SIGARAB, the ACL Special Interest Group for Arabic NLP, where I actively support the growth and cohesion of this community. I served as the Program Committee (PC) Chair of EMNLP 2023 and as the General Chair of the Arabic NLP Conference 2022. In addition, I have held the role of Senior Area Chair for several leading international conferences, including ACL 2025, AAAI 2026, LREC 2026, and EACL 2026.

Associate Teaching Professor of Mathematics with over fifteen years of university teaching and research experience, passionate about mathematics and its beauty. Holds a PhD in Mathematics from McGill University and both Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics from the American University of Beirut.

Dedicated to excellence in mathematics education through rigorous, engaging, and innovative teaching that fosters deep understanding, critical thinking, and intellectual curiosity. Extensive experience in course design, curriculum development, and student-centered instruction across a wide range of undergraduate mathematics courses. Author of over fifteen peer-reviewed research papers and actively engaged in the broader mathematical community through research, mentorship, and academic collaboration. Committed to inspiring and empowering the next generation of mathematicians, scientists, and problem-solvers.

Maria Pia Gomez-Laich is an Associate Teaching Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar where she teaches courses in academic reading and writing and digital humanities. She earned her Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition from Carnegie Mellon University. Her research areas include: academic writing development, second language writing, task-based language teaching and learning, and intercultural pragmatics. Her research has appeared in international journals such as The Modern Language Journal, Journal of Writing Research, Linguistics and Education, and Foreign Language Annals.

Dr. Khaled Harras, is the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty, and Teaching Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Melon University Qatar. He is also the Director of the HBJ Center for CS Education, and the founder/director of the Networking Systems Lab (NSL) there. Dr. Harras received his B.S., Summa Cum Laude, from the American University in Cairo (AUC), followed by his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He has received multiple awards that include the AUC’s President’s cup (4.0 GPA), Ahmed H. Zewail prize for excellence in Sciences and Humanities, Presidential merit scholarship, UC Graduate Fellowship, and the Outstanding Educator award. 

Academically, over the past two decades, he has been working on the areas of challenged and opportunistic networks, video sensor networks, unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), ubiquitous and pervasive systems, mobile edge computation/networked architectures, cyber security, federated learning, and AI in systems. He also has expertise in the domains of wireless and mobile networks measurement, building real systems and testbeds, as well as designing and implementing frameworks based on real data. Dr. Harras has more than 150 refereed publications in numerous international prestigious journals, conferences, and workshops, as well as 4 US patents. Along with his research group in the past few years, he has won the national best computing research award twice, received two best paper awards, and his work has been featured online various venues like MIT Tech Review and Tech the Future. To date, he has been involved in or managing research grants that amount to more than 5 Million USD, and has supervised over 45 different personnel including undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and research engineers. He is a senior member of the ACM and IEEE.

Outside of Academia, Dr. Harras has worked in the technology industry at Citrix Systems, and collaborated closely on joint projects with Intel, Lockheed Martin, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). He also worked as an advisor to the Minister of ICT, as well as a Senior Systems Scientist at the Qatar Computing and Research Institute (QCRI). He has been involved at different capacities in three different startup companies that worked on automated robotic delivery systems, AR/VR-based product development, and reimagning higher education.

Erik Helin is a lecturer (Special Faculty) who mainly teaches and coordinates elementary, intermediate, and advanced level Spanish courses. He also teaches courses in English, such as "Tutoring for Community Outreach" and "Arts in Qatar." Beyond teaching, he have taken students on several cultural and academic trips to many parts of Spain, and the most recent trip took place in May of 2023. Helin strives to make his courses relevant and goes to great lengths to involve Spanish-speaking community members in his in- and out-of-class activities. Prior to joining CMU-Q, Helin taught Spanish at the University of Pittsburgh, PA, and also in his native Sweden. Before working in academia he held two positions that were language related: first in international shipping (exports and imports) (in Detroit, MI), and second in translation and interpretation, both as a translator and a project manager (in Pittsburgh, PA). Helin has a strong passion for teaching, but most importantly he enjoys seeing his students succeed.