PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hossam Faris

Also known as حسام فارس

Hossam Faris is a computer scientist at the University of Jordan whose work covers evolutionary computation, machine learning and data mining. He completed a PhD in e-Business at the University of Salento in 2011 and was a postdoctoral researcher with the GeNeura team at the University of Granada in 2016. He coauthored the Salp Swarm Algorithm paper in 2017 and the Harris hawks optimization paper in 2019, and he was on the team behind the EvoCluster clustering framework in 2019. In 2020, the University of Jordan honored him among its most-cited researchers in Scopus, with the first rank by citations for 2014 to 2019, and in 2023 he coauthored a PLOS ONE paper on detecting medical specialties in Arabic questions for the telemedicine platform Altibbi. He is a professor in the Information Technology department of the University of Jordan's King Abdullah II School for Information Technology.

Now at
King Abdullah II School for Information Technology

Timeline

  1. 2004–2011

    Degrees in Jordan and Italy

    He earns a BA in 2004 and an MSc in 2008 in computer science, at Yarmouk University and Al-Balqa' Applied University. A full-time, competition-based scholarship from the Italian Ministry of Education and Research takes him to the University of Salento, where he completes a PhD in e-Business in 2011.

  2. 2016

    Postdoc with the GeNeura team

    In 2016, he works as a postdoctoral researcher with the GeNeura team at the Information and Communication Technologies Research Center (CITIC) of the University of Granada in Spain.

  3. 2017

    The Salp Swarm Algorithm

    In 2017, he coauthors "Salp Swarm Algorithm: A bio-inspired optimizer for engineering design problems" in Advances in Engineering Software, with Seyedali Mirjalili, Amir H. Gandomi and three other authors. The paper proposes the Salp Swarm Algorithm and a multi-objective version, inspired by the way salps swarm while navigating and foraging in oceans.

  4. 2019

    Harris hawks and EvoCluster

    In 2019, he is one of six authors, with Ali Asghar Heidari, Seyedali Mirjalili, Ibrahim Aljarah, Majdi Mafarja and Huiling Chen, of "Harris hawks optimization: Algorithm and applications" in Future Generation Computer Systems, which proposes a population-based, nature-inspired optimizer modeled on the cooperative chasing style of Harris' hawks. In October 2019, he joins Raneem Qaddoura, Ibrahim Aljarah and Pedro Castillo on the team behind EvoCluster, an open-source Python framework that applies nature-inspired metaheuristic optimizers to partitional clustering.

  5. 2020

    First in Scopus citations

    In 2020, the University of Jordan honors a number of its researchers who are most cited in Scopus, and he holds the first rank by citations for research published from 2014 to 2019, with Ibrahim Aljarah third.

  6. 2020

    Chapters in a Springer volume

    In 2020, he coauthors the introduction to Springer's Evolutionary Machine Learning Techniques with Seyedali Mirjalili and Ibrahim Aljarah. He also coauthors two chapters in the volume, one on link prediction with evolutionary neural network models and one on swarm-based feature selection for imbalanced data classification.

  7. 2023

    Specialty detection for telemedicine

    In November 2023, he publishes "Specialty detection in the context of telemedicine in a highly imbalanced multi-class distribution" in PLOS ONE with Alaa Alomari and Pedro A. Castillo, supervising work on a deep neural network that detects the medical specialty for Arabic medical questions. The paper lists him with the University of Granada and Altibbi, and a correction in December 2023 adds his University of Jordan affiliation.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor at the University of Jordan

    He is a professor in the Information Technology department of the King Abdullah II School for Information Technology at the University of Jordan, with specialties in machine learning, data mining and evolutionary computation. TopSCINET's 2026 listing places him at the University of Jordan, 1,495th of 517,648 researchers in artificial intelligence and image processing.

Career

  1. NowKing Abdullah II School for Information TechnologyProfessor
  2. 2016Universidad de GranadaPostdoctoral Researcher

Education

  1. 2011University of SalentoPhD in e-Business
  2. 2008Al-Balqa Applied UniversityMSc in Computer Science
  3. 2004Yarmouk UniversityBA in Computer Science

From the biography.

  1. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes University of Jordan. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Jordan. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of Jordan. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Universidad de Granada. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Hossam Faris yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Members – EvoML Research Group evo-ml.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Salp Swarm Algorithm: A bio-inspired optimizer for engineering design problems - Torrens University Australia research.torrens.edu.au. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Harris hawks optimization: Algorithm and applications - Torrens University Australia research.torrens.edu.au. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. EvoCluster: An Open-Source Nature-Inspired Optimization Clustering Framework in Python – EvoML Research Group evo-ml.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Congratulations to Prof. Hossam Faris, Dr. Ibrahim Aljarrah, and Ala’ M. Al-Zoubi for being honored – EvoML Research Group evo-ml.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Publications – EvoML Research Group evo-ml.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Specialty detection in the context of telemedicine in a highly imbalanced multi-class distribution | PLOS One journals.plos.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Correction: Specialty detection in the context of telemedicine in a highly imbalanced multi-class distribution - PMC ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Faris, Hossam, The University of Jordan | TOPSCINET topscinet.com. Checked 21 October 2026.