AUC Computer Science Team Publishes Arab World Research Section for Communications Magazine

In the works since 2019, the first special Arab World Research section has been published in the Association for Computing Machinery magazine, Communications of the ACM.

Sherif Aly, chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, co-organized this special section with Mostafa Youssef, professor of computer science and engineering, and Mohamed Mokbel from the University of Minnesota. The section was also completed with the help of Tamer ElBatt, professor of computer science, and Cherif Salama, associate professor of computer science.

"I was approached in October 2019 as part of an initial exploration activity by the editors of the magazine to see if there is enough research capacity in the Arab Region,” Aly said. “The special section highlights some of the diverse research areas happening in computing in the Arab world.”

The section currently has 18 articles covering hot topics and big trends in the region in areas such as data science for oil and gas, AI, autonomous driving suitable for this region, traffic routing in preparation for the World Cup, natural language processing and more. One of the articles talks about unleashing academic maturity innovations in AUC’s own Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

With more than 85,000 readers around the world, Communications is recognized as the most trusted and knowledgeable source of industry information for today's computing professionals, according to Aly. He emphasized the importance of having AUC at the forefront of this project.

“Having people from AUC lead this activity of creating the special section, and eventually producing this for readership from around the world is a great exposure to AUC and the region. This magazine in computing is like nature and science is to other domains, this is how renowned this magazine is,” he said. 

Editor-in-chief of Communications Andrew Chien spoke to the popularity of the Arab World Research section since its publishing. 

“The Arab World Special Section is now in print and on the web, and it looks terrific,” he said. “I’ve been getting comments on how great it is.”

He added that the section is a “terrific representation of exciting computing activities in the Arabia region.” 

Aly said that this wouldn’t have been possible without the team that worked on this, Moustafa Youssef, Cherif Salama, and Tamer ElBatt from AUC, as well as the advisory board composed of professionals in the domain from Qatar, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.