Dr. Ahmad Showail is the dean of the College of Computer and Science and Engineering at Taibah University. Dr. Ahmad holds a BSc (Hons), from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, MSc and PhD in computer science from KAUST (Academic Excellence Award – top 5%). In 2022, Dr. Ahmad was the recipient of the inaugural KAUST alumni change makers award in the Leadership Track.

Before joining KAUST, Dr. Ahmad was a control systems engineer with SABIC. In fact, Dr. Ahmad participated in the design, engineering, and construction phases of YANSAB, which is one of the largest petrochemical complexes of SABIC in the western region of Saudi Arabia.

Dr. Ahmad published several papers in top journals and magazines and filed a couple of US and EU patents. Dr. Ahmad’s research focuses on security and privacy in wired and wireless OT networks, IoT and smart cities. In 2022, Dr. Ahmad received the prestigious Fulbright Award to conduct research at the University of California Irvine as a visiting Scholar. His project was about secure and private IoT architecture using Intel Software Guard Extensions. Dr. Showail was also a visiting researcher at Texas A&M University, and the University of Oxford in the UK.