Research
AI at the intersection of mobility systems, services, and business models: seamless integrated mobility, software-defined vehicle observability, contextual causal inference, and design, planning, and control problems.
Explore researchAI for Smart Mobility
Alaa Khamis
PhD, SMIEEE · Associate Professor, KFUPM
My research sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence and mobility systems, services and business models: from seamless integrated mobility and software-defined vehicle observability to the design, planning, and control problems behind people mobility, logistics, and transportation infrastructure.
- Director, AI for Smart Mobility Lab, KFUPM
- Chair, IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society, Saudi Chapter
- Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering & IRC for Smart Mobility and Logistics, College of Computing and Mathematics, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals
- Adjunct Faculty, University of Toronto and Ontario Tech University
- Formerly AI & Smart Mobility Technical Leader, General Motors
6
Books authored
200+
Peer-reviewed papers
72
US patents filed
44
Courses taught
Top 2%
Most-cited scientists
What I work on
Research, writing and teaching around artificial intelligence for smart, sustainable and inclusive mobility.
Publications
Six books, seven book chapters, more than 200 refereed papers and 72 filed US patents, trade secrets and defensive publications.
Browse publicationsTeaching
Forty-four undergraduate and graduate courses across Canada, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Egypt, with class sizes from 8 to 600 students.
See coursesService & Honors
Founding chair of the IEEE ITSS Saudi Arabia Chapter and of IEEE SM; editor, reviewer, and recipient of the 2018 IEEE MGA Achievement Award.
View service recordBooks
Written for practitioners who need to put search, optimization, and mobility technology to work.
Optimization Algorithms: AI techniques for design, planning, and control problems
Manning Publications, 2024. Deterministic and stochastic derivative-free optimization, nature-inspired search and machine-learning methods, with Python case studies throughout.
About this book
Smart Mobility: Exploring Foundational Technologies and Wider Impacts
Apress (Springer Nature), 2021. A holistic view of how the smart mobility triad (technology, governance, and city planning) combines to create sustainable mobility.
About this bookLatest news
Appointments, papers, keynotes and lab announcements.
- As part of KFUPM’s Ibn Battuta Global Scholarship Program, I spent June and July 2026 as a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute (UTTRI), working on adaptive traffic signal control.
- I have been appointed Founding Chair of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) Saudi Arabia Chapter, leading the establishment of the Society’s activities in the Kingdom.
- My paper “Agentic Ontology-guided Image Generation and Evaluation for Rare-Event Data Augmentation in Safety-Critical Perception” has been accepted for publication in Array, 2026.
- Two post-doctoral fellow positions are open in the AI for Smart Mobility Lab at KFUPM, on agentic AI for seamless integrated mobility and contextual observability of software-defined vehicles. Details here.
- My papers “Agentic AI Systems: Architecture and Evaluation using a Frictionless Parking Scenario” and “Rethinking Vehicle Architecture Through Softwarization and Servitization” were accepted by IEEE Access, 2025.
- I won first place in the Sustainable Solutions for Pilgrims Challenge (Umrah Challenge), part of the Umrah and Ziyarah Forum organized by the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah in Al-Madinah, April 2025.
Get in touch
Office
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
Lab
AI for Smart Mobility Lab. Open postdoctoral positions.