PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Tanzila Saba

Tanzila Saba is an artificial intelligence researcher at Prince Sultan University in Riyadh, where she leads the Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics Research Lab. She earned a PhD in document information security and management from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in 2012, started at Prince Sultan University in 2013, and was nominated a Research Professor in September 2019. Her papers include brain tumor detection in 2020, intrusion detection for IoT networks in 2022 and a kidney carcinoma study in 2025. A Stanford University and Elsevier study listed her among the world's top 2% of scientists in 2020 and 2021. As of October 2026, she is Associate Director of the Research and Initiatives Center, and her research covers medical imaging, pattern recognition, IoT and information security.

Works
535
Citations
22,585
h-index
83

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2012

    A PhD at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

    She earns a PhD in document information security and management from the Faculty of Computing at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in 2012, and receives the Best Student Chancellor Award there.

  2. 2013

    Joining Prince Sultan University

    She starts at Prince Sultan University in Riyadh in 2013, in the Information Systems department of the College of Computer and Information Sciences.

  3. 2019

    Research Professor at Prince Sultan

    In September 2019, she is nominated a Research Professor at Prince Sultan University. She also leads the university's Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics Research Lab and its Students' Data Science Club.

  4. 2020

    Brain tumor and cancer detection

    In 2020, she publishes Brain tumor detection using fusion of hand crafted and deep learning features in Cognitive Systems Research, written with four coauthors. She is also the sole author of the survey Recent advancement in cancer detection using machine learning: Systematic survey of decades, comparisons and challenges, published in the Journal of Infection and Public Health in 2020.

  5. 2020–2024

    Top 2% of scientists

    A research study by Stanford University and Elsevier lists her among the world's top 2% of scientists in 2020 and 2021. Her ranking in the top 2% continues through 2024.

  6. 2022

    Deep learning for IoT intrusion detection

    In 2022, she is first author of Anomaly-based intrusion detection system for IoT networks through deep learning model, published in Computers and Electrical Engineering with Amjad Rehman, Tariq Sadad, Hoshang Kolivand and Saeed Ali Bahaj.

  7. 2025

    Kidney carcinoma analysis with Swin-ViT

    In 2025, she coauthors Robust kidney carcinoma prognosis and characterization using Swin-ViT and DeepLabV3+ with multi-model transfer learning, published in Applied Soft Computing with Amjad Rehman and Tariq Mahmood.

  8. As of October 2026

    Associate Director and AIDA lab leader

    As of October 2026, she is Associate Director of the Research and Initiatives Center and leader of the Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics Research Lab at Prince Sultan University in Riyadh. Her research covers medical imaging, pattern recognition, IoT and information security, and she serves as a track chair for the ICEGOV 2026 conference.

Career

  1. Since 2013Prince Sultan UniversityLeader, Research Professor
  2. 2024–2026Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University
  3. 2009–2013University of Technology Malaysia
  4. 2003–2006Chiba Institute of Technology

Education

  1. 2012Universiti Teknologi MalaysiaPhD

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Technology Malaysia. 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.
  2. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  3. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIWe 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.
  4. 43% of living people shaping AI work outside their country of birthWe estimate that 43% of living people shaping AI work outside their country of birth (520 of 1,198 people with known birth and employment countries).

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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  1. Prof. Tanzila Saba is Prestigious Sessions Speaker at IN4OBE Global Summit 2022 in4obe.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Tanzila Saba – ICEGOV 2026 icegov.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Prince Sultan University | Faculty: Prof. Tanzila Saba psu.edu.sa. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. AIintelli Vision 2027 | Plenary Speakers aiintellivision.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Saba, Tanzila - Google Scholar scholar.google.com. Checked 20 October 2026.