I am the director of the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Intelligent Secure Systems (IRC-ISS) at KFUPM. I am an assistant professor with the Computer Engineering Department and the Information and Computer Science Department at KFUPM. My research interests are data security and privacy, secure and intelligent systems, quantum computing, and post-quantum security. For more details, check the outcomes of my research group (SPQ) research interests, or download my CV.
I earned my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University in 2018. My advisor was Prof. Arif Ghafoor. Prior to that, I earned my MS degree from KAUST and my Bachelor degree from KFUPM in 2011 and 2008, respectively.
Latest news
- June 2026 (Another Research Grant Award)
- Dr. Felemban was awarded a research grant titled "Quantum Algorithm Design and Emulation for Seismic Wave Modeling" by Saudi Aramco with SAR 650,000 for 18 months.
- November 2025 (Best Paper Award)
- Our paper titled "Exaggeration-based Fake Cybersecurity News Detection" recieved the best paper award at the 1st ACM Workshop on Deepfake, Deception, and Disinformation Security (D3S 2025) held in conjunction with ACM CCS 2025 in Taipei, Taiwan. Congratulations to Abdullah E. Felemban, who conducted this work while at KFUPM in Summer 2025 as part of the Inbound Summer Research Program. [Workshop website]
- April 2025 (World Quantum Day)
- Dr. Muhamad moderated a session titled "Bridging the gap between academia and industry: turning research solutions into commercial products" during the World Quantum Day 2025 organized by C4IR in The Garage, Riyadh. [Recording]
- April 2025
- Dr. Nourah Al-Otaibi successfully defended her PhD thesis titled "Edge-based Detection and Mitigation of Label Flipping Attacks in Federated Learning Systems". It was a long, yet rewarding journey for Dr. Nourah. She published 1 journal and 2 A* conference papers. She also submitted a promising paper to IEEE TDSC. Best wishes to Dr. Nourah, who is the first PhD student to graduate from the SPQ group!
- February 2025
- Dr. Muhamad chaired the organization committee of the 1st Symposium of Quantum Computing and Technology, held at KFUPM on 17–18 February 2025. [Symposium website] [Recording]
- February 2025
- The SPQ group was awarded a research grant titled "Using Quantum Computing for Reservoir Simulation" by Saudi Aramco. Looking forward to a fruitful collaboration.
- November 2024
- Invited talks:
1. From Classical to Quantum Computing — College of Petroleum and Geosciences (slides, recording)
2. Undergraduate Research: How to start? (slides) - October 2024
- Invited talks and panel discussions:
1. Panelist in a session titled "Quantum Technology in Saudi Arabia" at the Digital Technology Forum 2024, organized by the Communications, Space and Technology Commission (CST) (media, recording)
2. Invited talk at EXPEC ARC about the Quantum Computing program at KFUPM (slides, poster)
3. Invited talk to Saudi Aramco Cyber Awareness (slides) - October 2024
- Our paper titled "File Fragment Type Classification using Light-Weight Convolutional Neural Networks" has been accepted for publication in IEEE Access. This work started in 2020 by Kunwar Saaim. He worked with me remotely when he was a BSc student at Aligarh Muslim University (now MSc student at the University of Alberta). Kunwar published a conference paper on the same work in IFIP SEC 2022 (paper). Later, Dr. Mustafa Ghaleb (Postdoc at IRC-ISS) got involved and proposed two more lightweight models for file fragment classification. This work is in collaboration with Saleh Al-Saleh (now PhD student at Penn State University) while he was a Lecturer in the COE department at KFUPM. Special thanks to Dr. Ahmad Al-Mulhem, who proposed this idea and worked closely with the group to identify the research gap using his expertise in Digital Forensics.
- October 2024
- Our paper titled "Edge-Assisted Label-Flipping Attack Detection in Federated Learning", authored by PhD student Nourah Al-Otaibi, has been accepted with minor modifications in the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society. This is the first accepted journal paper from her PhD work. Congratulations, Nourah!
- July 2024
- Our paper titled "A Systematic Literature Review on Vulnerabilities, Mitigation Techniques, and Attacks in Field-Programmable Gate Arrays" has been accepted for publication in the Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering. This paper is led by Dr. Ali Al-Suwiyan (KFUPM), in collaboration with Prof. Akramul Azim (Ontario Tech University) and Dr. Abdulaziz Tabakh (KFUPM).
- July 2024
- A poster titled "Discovery of Quantum Algorithms Using Genetic Algorithms: Exponential Speedup via Random Sampling" will be presented at IEEE Quantum Week (QCE 2024) in Montreal, Canada. This work was completed by Tariq Al-Mugbil in the Quantum Computing MX program project.
- July 2024
- PhD student Nourah Al-Otaibi will present her work at the 17th International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Security for Information Systems (CISIS 2024) in Salamanca, Spain.
- June 2024
- Our paper titled "Exploring the Human Response to Anger: Uncovering Insights through Infrared Thermography and Experimental Psychology" has been accepted in Acta Neuropsychologica. This paper is in collaboration with Dr. Tarik Abdulrahim from KFUPM, and is an example of the interdisciplinary work that we aspire to conduct at IRC-ISS. In this paper, Hassan Al-Saffar (then BSc student in EE, KFUPM) explored an interesting idea to study the correlation between infrared thermography and psychology. Dr. Tarik set up an experiment to provoke the anger emotion through a guided experiment while capturing the change of skin temperature using a thermal camera. (paper, image)
- October 2022
- Three papers have been accepted to CICN 2022, held at PMU, Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia. Congratulations to:
1. Shuroog Al-Ogbi (MX student)
2. Mahmoud Ellouh (BSc student)
3. Khaled Al-Butainy (BSc student) - March 2022
- Our paper entitled "BeeCast: A Device-to-Device Collaborative Video Streaming System" has been accepted to IWCMC 2022. This paper is an outcome of research project USRG1904 with Asaad Al-Ghamdi, Younes Balah, and Mohammad Al-Bejadi.
- March 2022
- Our paper entitled "File Fragment Classification using Depth-wise Separable Convolutions" has been accepted to IFIP SEC 2022, Denmark. This paper is a collaboration with Dr. Ahmed Al-Mulhem and Mr. Saleh Al-Saleh from COE, KFUPM. The work was mainly conducted by Kunwar Saaim from Aligarh Muslim University, India. Congratulations, Kunwar!
- December 2021
- Dr. Muhamad is serving as a Guest Editor in the upcoming special issue on "Enhanced Cyber-Physical Security in IoT" in Information, MDPI. The deadline is 15/3/2022.
- October 2021
- Our paper titled "Guard: Attack-Resilient Adaptive Load Balancing in Distributed Streaming Systems" was accepted for publication in IEEE TDSC. This paper is a collaboration with Dr. Anas Daghistani and Dr. Musab Khayat while at DMSL, Purdue University.
- October 2021
- Our paper titled "A Modelling and Scheduling Tool for Crowd Movement in Complex Network" was accepted for publication in Intelligent Automation and Soft Computing. This paper is an outcome of Project MDP-IRI-9-2020 funded by the Makkah Portal for Research and Innovation.
- October 2021
- Dr. Muhamad delivered a talk titled "From Classical to Quantum Computing" to the Physics Department, KFUPM. (slides)
- June 2021
- Dr. Muhamad delivered a talk titled "AI and Data Privacy" at Thakaa Center. (YouTube)
- March 2021
- Our paper titled "Rule-based Detection of False Data Injection Attacks Against Optimal Power Flow" was accepted for publication in Sensors. Congratulations, Sani, for publishing two papers!
- March 2021
- Our paper titled "Advanced Persistent False Data Injection Attacks Against Optimal Power Flow in Power Systems" was accepted at IEEE IWCMC 2021, Harbin, China (acceptance rate 39%).
- March 2021
- Dr. Muhamad delivered a talk titled "From Classical to Quantum Computing" to the COE Talks Series at KFUPM. (video)
- February 2021
- Dr. Muhamad was appointed as acting (founding) director of the new Interdisciplinary Research Center for Intelligent Secure Systems at KFUPM.
- February 2021
- Dr. Muhamad delivered an invited talk titled "From Classical to Quantum Computing" for the Aramco EXPEC Computing Center.
- November 2020
- Sani Umar, an MSc student at KFUPM, has successfully defended his MS thesis. Prof. Tarek Sheltami and Dr. Yahya Osais were on the examining committee. Congratulations, Sani!
- October 2020
- BeeCast won 2nd place in the 2021 ACM Student Research Competition (SRC). Congratulations to Asaad Alghamdi, Younes Balah, and Mohammed Albejadi. You can find the paper here. (news coverage)
- September 2020
- In summer 2020, KFUPM approved 21 new CX programs and 15 new MX programs. This Fall, I am teaching three courses:
1. COE 526 Data Privacy
2. COE 426 Data Privacy
3. COE 466 Quantum Architecture and Algorithms - July 2020
- Our demo paper entitled "BeeCast: A Collaborative Video Streaming System" has been accepted in the Demo track of MobiCom 2020. This is the first outcome of the project funded by DSR-KFUPM.
- June 2020
- Pleased to be part of the Digital Revolution Task Force for S20 Saudi Arabia.
- May 2020
- Pleased to receive a research grant from KACST as part of their response to COVID-19. Project title: Robust, Privacy Preserving Surveillance System for COVID-19. Duration: 6 months. (project website)
