PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Rabab Alomairy

Rabab Alomairy is a computer scientist who builds algorithms, software and hardware-aware systems that let AI and scientific applications run efficiently on supercomputers. She earned her M.S. in 2013 and her Ph.D. in 2022 at KAUST under David Keyes and Hatem Ltaief, and won the Gauss Award for Best Paper at the ISC conference in 2020. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Julia Lab at MIT CSAIL, she was part of a team named a Gordon Bell Prize finalist in 2024 for mixed-precision genetics software that reached 1.8 EFlop/s on the Alps supercomputer, and she received the IEEE Computer Society TCHPC Early Career Researchers Award in 2025. She is an Ibn Rushd Assistant Professor of Computer Science at KAUST, the first Saudi faculty member in its Computer Science program, where she intends to establish the Tuwaiq Intelligent Computing Lab.

Timeline

  1. 2010–2013

    Computer science degrees in Saudi Arabia

    Originally from Taif, she moves with her family to Jeddah at 15, and earns a B.S. in computer science at King Abdulaziz University in 2010. She completes an M.S. in computer science at KAUST in 2013.

  2. 2017–2022

    Ph.D. at KAUST under Keyes

    She begins her Ph.D. at KAUST in 2017 and finishes in 2022, working in the Extreme Computing Research Center under Professor David E. Keyes and Senior Research Scientist Hatem Ltaief.

  3. 2020

    The Gauss Award

    In 2020, she wins the Gauss Award for Best Paper at the ISC High Performance Conference and becomes the first Saudi to receive it.

  4. 2022

    Gordon Bell finalist and Rising Star

    A global weather prediction model from a KAUST team led by David Keyes, with Alomairy scaling up its mathematical models for supercomputers, is nominated for the Gordon Bell Prize in 2022; the latest version processes data from 10 million locations in 90 minutes, where earlier models took 18 hours. The US Department of Energy also names her a Rising Star in Computational and Data Sciences in 2022.

  5. By 2024

    Postdoc at MIT's Julia Lab

    She contributes to the Department of Energy-funded SLATE project during an internship at the University of Tennessee, then joins MIT's JuliaLab as a postdoctoral fellow supported by a KAUST Ibn Rushd Fellowship. There she works on high-performance computing, task-based runtimes and GPU-accelerated numerical libraries.

  6. 2024

    Genetics on GH200 Superchips

    In 2024, a team including her is named a finalist for the Gordon Bell Prize for a mixed-precision kernel ridge regression method for genome-wide association studies. On NVIDIA's GH200 Superchips, the software reaches 1.8 EFlop/s on the Alps supercomputer in the largest multivariate genetic study yet, with roughly 305,000 UK Biobank patients.

  7. 2025

    An IEEE early career award

    In 2025, the IEEE Computer Society names her a winner of its TCHPC Early Career Researchers Award for Excellence in High Performance Computing while she is a postdoc at MIT's JuliaLab. She is the first recipient from the Middle East, and the award recognizes her work showing how supercomputers can make AI algorithms more efficient.

  8. As of October 2026

    Faculty at KAUST

    KAUST announces in July 2026 that she returns as its first Saudi faculty member in Computer Science, where she is an Ibn Rushd Assistant Professor and plans to establish the Tuwaiq Intelligent Computing Lab. Earlier she served as Senior AI Expert at the Saudi company Tahakom, leading work on AI infrastructure, distributed AI systems and sovereign AI.

Career

  1. Since 2026King Abdullah University of Science and TechnologyIbn Rushd Assistant Professor of Computer Science
  2. University of Tennessee at KnoxvilleIntern
  3. MIT CSAILPostdoctoral Fellow
  4. TahakomSenior AI Expert

Education

  1. 2022King Abdullah University of Science and TechnologyPh.D.
  2. 2013King Abdullah University of Science and TechnologyM.S.
  3. 2010King Abdulaziz UniversityB.S.

From the biography.

  1. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. 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. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. 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.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Rabab Alomairy | Ibn Rushd Assistant Professor, Computer Science cemse.kaust.edu.sa. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Meet Rabab Alomairy alumni.kaust.edu.sa. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. 2025 IEEE-CS TCHPC ECR Award Winners tc.computer.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. A predictive eye on the prize cemse.kaust.edu.sa. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. CSAIL postdoc Rabab Alomairy et al. named finalists for 2024 Gordon Bell Prize csail.mit.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. KAUST alumna Dr. Rabab Alomairy wins prestigious IEEE CS TCHPC Early Career Researchers Award cemse.kaust.edu.sa. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. Rabab Alomairy earns IEEE TCHPC Early Career Award csail.mit.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. Rabab Alomairy becomes the University's first Saudi female faculty member in computer science cemse.kaust.edu.sa. Checked 22 October 2026.