18 January 2015
Doha - Kemal Oflazer and Selma Limam-Mansar have been appointed Associate Dean of Research and Associate Dean of Education respectively at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.

Oflazer is a faculty member in computer science at Carnegie Mellon Qatar. He obtained his doctorate in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Specializing in the area of natural language processing, Oflazer is an active member of the research community and has widely published his work in journals and conferences.

Since 2008, he has been leading the Natural Language Processing (NLP) lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. Alongside a team of faculty members and research associates, Oflazer has been investigating problems related to multilingual processing and machine translation with a special focus on improving Arabic language technology and language learning. He has received six research projects funded by the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) National Priorities Research Program (NPRP) as either a lead or co-lead investigator.

Limam-Mansar, a faculty member in information systems, holds a Ph.D. from L'Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble in France. She joined Carnegie Mellon Qatar in 2007 to help launch the information systems program and was awarded the meritorious teaching award in 2010. Her research focuses on business process management, particularly on tools and best practices in business process design and re-engineering.

Limam-Mansar also founded 'Ibtikar' (Arabic for 'innovation'), an information systems high schooloutreach program thatengages students to design creative solutions to tackle important socio-cultural challenges facing the community.The program was awarded the Education Citysustainability award in 2011 for excellence in community service. In June2013, she founded the first Qatar Chapter of the Association for InformationSystems (QRAIS), of which she is the current president.

"Kemal and Selmaare established academicsand administrators with an excellent track record in research and education. Their expertise will be an asset to Carnegie Mellon as we continue to grow and develop our programs," said Ilker Baybars, dean of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.

In December, John O'Brien, associate professor of accounting at Carnegie Mellon Qatar, was appointed associate dean, where he will be responsible for assisting the Dean's office with faculty affairs. O'Brien earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in the United States and has been with the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business since 1984.

In addition to the recent leadership appointments, Chadi Aounhas joined Carnegie Mellon Qatar as an associate professor in information systems. Aoun earned his doctorate from the University of New South Wales in Australia.

For more information on programs offered at Carnegie Mellon Qatar, please visit: http://webext.qatar.cmu.edu/academics

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About Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar
As a global leader in education, Carnegie Mellon University is known for its creativity, collaboration across disciplines, and top programs in business, technology and the arts. The university has been home to some of the world's most important thinkers, among them 19 Nobel Laureates and 12 Turing Award winners.

In 2004, Qatar Foundation invited Carnegie Mellon to join Education City, a groundbreaking center for scholarship and research. The campus continues to grow, now providing a prestigious education to more than 400 students from 40 countries. The university offers five undergraduate degree programs in Biological Sciences, Business Administration, Computational Biology, Computer Science and Information Systems.

Students in Qatar join more than 12,000 Carnegie Mellon students across the globe, who will become the next generation of leaders tackling tomorrow's challenges. The university's 95,000 alumni are recruited by some of the world's most innovative organizations.

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© Press Release 2015