DR. MOHD SABERI MOHAMAD
(Professor)


Director of Health Data Science Lab, Department of Genetics and Genomics,
College of Medical and Health Sciences, UAEU

RESEARCH AREAS

1

Artificial Intelligence

The ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform
tasks commonly asssociated with intelligent beings.

1

Machine Learning

Scientific study of algorithms and statistical models to perform a
specific task without using explicit instructions,
but only relying on patterns and inference.

1

Big Data

Large volume of data – both structured and unstructured –
inundates a business on a day-to-day basis.

1

Data Science

Multi-disciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes,
algorithms and systems to extract knowledge and insights from
structured and unstructured data.

1

Bioinformatics &
Computational Biology

An interdisciplinary field that develops and applies computational methods
to anaylze large collections of biological data, such as genetic
sequences, cell populations or protein samples, to make
new preditions or discover new biology.

BIODATA

Mohd Saberi Mohamad is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Health Data Science at the Department of Genetics and Genomics, the College of Medicine and Health Sciences (CMHS), UAE University. He is now the director of Health Data Science Lab in CMHS. He completed my Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Bioinformatics at Osaka Prefecture University (Japan) in 2010. The time taken to complete the Ph.D. study was 2.5 years (including the convocation ceremony). The total number of publications produced from this Ph.D. study was 11 journal articles (five indexed by ISI-Web of Science and six indexed by Scopus) and 18 conference articles. He received a Bachelor of Computer Science (Computer Network and Security) and Master of Computer Science (full research mode) in the field of AI for Bioinformatics from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in 2002 and 2005, respectively. The primary contribution of his Ph.D. and Master's studies is in the field of Artificial Intelligence, with a particular focus on Machine Learning, Optimization, and Data Science for Bioinformatics. In the early career, he started in industrial sectors as a computer engineer and programmer, and after that joined UTM as a lecturer in 2006. His research areas are AI, Machine Learning, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology, Data Science, eResearch, and Big Data.

He has received the 2018 Malaysia’s Research Star Award in the category of young researchers. The Ministry of Education Malaysia (MEM) conferred the award and officiated by the Minister of MEM. The award recipient is selected by international parties, namely Elsevier (Scopus) and Clarivate Analytics (ISI-Web of Science). He also received several other awards such as an outstanding reviewer for the Journal of Neurocomputing (Impact Factor: 3.241; 1st Quartile) and Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (Impact Factor: 2.879; 1st Quartile), university excellent service awards three times, best paper awards in several conferences, and awarded scholarships for my studies in Degree, Master, and Ph.D.

He has successfully obtained 21 research grants as the project leader and as a project member for 20 research grants. Those research grants were funded by external parties (government and industry) and universities. The research funding (grant) secured includes the participation of international collaborators from countries such as Japan, Australia, and Spain. The research grants aim to apply Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Machine Learning to various fields including healthcare, medicine, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, energy, and more. For publication so far, he has produced 144 articles in refereed journals, 101 conference articles, 68 book chapters, five research books, one original book, and 13 edited books. His H-Index is 31 (Google Scholar), 20 (Scopus), and 16 (ISI-Web of Science). He is also an active reviewer for 35 journals indexed by ISI-Web of Science. Apart from being an active reviewer, he is an article evaluator for 32 international conferences in several countries such as Europe, ASEAN, Spain, US, China, Japan, Australia, and Korea.

In the aspect of teaching, he has taught 14 varieties of courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels such as Artificial Intelligence, Seminar for Industrial Revolution 4.0, Introduction to Big Data Analytics, Skill for Public Health Practice, Object Oriented Programming, Programming Techniques I, Programming Techniques II, Introduction to Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics I, Genome Mining, Special Topics in Bioinformatics, Technology & Information Systems, Numeracy and Information Technology, and Multimedia Basic & Web Technology. Currently, he is appointed as the coordinator for the Biomedical Data Science Track to develop the Bachelor of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics program, which involves several colleges such as Engineering, Medicine, IT, and Science. At the same time, he was also appointed as the head of the Master of Bioinformatics program development committee. Previously, he has been appointed as advisor and head of the curriculum development committee for IT academic programs at the undergraduate and postgraduate (Master and Ph.D) levels. These academic programs focus on AI, Data Science, IoT, Data Analytics and Bioinformatics. He was also a program coordinator for the Bachelor of Computer Science (Bioinformatics). His main achievement as the program coordinator was successfully implementing the undergraduate research opportunity program at the undergraduate level, in which undergraduate students of the Bachelor of Computer Science (Bioinformatics) have published their articles in journals and international conferences. As a result, about 50% of them were enrolled in Master's and Ph.D. studies. He has been on an accreditation panel to the Malaysia Qualification Agency (MQA) to review academic programs (undergraduate and postgraduate) since 2013.

Besides teaching, he also actively contributed as the main supervisor for nine Ph.D. students (7 graduated, 2 ongoing) and a co-supervisor for three Ph.D. students (all graduated). Then, he was the main supervisor for nine Master by Research students (all graduated), co-supervisor for five Master by Research students (all graduated), and main supervisor for two Master by mix-mode students (1 graduated, 1 ongoing). Moreover, he was the main supervisor for 60 undergraduate students, and 23 undergraduate students are under joint supervision. He has also supervised 35 practical/industrial training students in various ICT industrial sectors.

In terms of academic and research leadership, he is now a Director of the Health Data Science Lab at the College of Medical and Health Sciences, UAE University (UAEU) and have held this position since 2021. At the same time, he was appointed as the Head of Human Variant Database Development and Bioinformatics Computing Infrastructure (develop and maintain) at the same college above. In addition, he has also been appointed as a Scientific Board Member for the Big Data Analytics Centre at UAEU. At the UAE national level, this year, the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Health and Prevention has appointed him as a member of the Working Team for Artificial Intelligence Applications of Health and Medical Research in the UAE. Before that, when he was working in Malaysia, he was a Director for the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, Head of the Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics Research Group, Founder of the Department of Data Science, Deputy Director (Academic) of the Centre for Communication and Informatics, and IT Manager. He has also been appointed as a head of task forces to establish a university innovation centre. Previously, he was appointed as a leader to head the task force for academic collaboration, training, and research between UMK and giant industries, namely Huawei Technologies Co, Ltd., Microsoft Corporation, and Alibaba Group Holding Limited. These collaborations are for professional certification programs in Data Science, AI, Big Data, and Digital Entrepreneurship for academic programs. Then, he successfully embedded courses taken from the company's professional modules into the Bachelor of IT Program (track in AI and Data Science). As a result, after students graduate, students get a degree and also professional certificates from the three companies.

In appreciation of his leadership, the university has appointed him as a member of the University Senate. At an international level, he has been a member of the advisory board for two research and innovation organisations in Europe: 1) the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute and 2) the Digital Innovation Hub since October 2018. In addition, he was also a head and member of 65 academic, research, and research committees at the faculty (29), university (30), national (7), and international levels (3). He also served as a chairman 12 times, while as a member 56 times for the conference committees in Europe, ASEAN, Japan, the US, Australia, China, and Malaysia. He also headed several student exchange programs (outbound and inbound) at international levels.

He has gained international recognition through invitations to speak as an invited speaker, talks, lectures, and keynote speaker. He has recently been invited as a guest speaker at two events to give a talk entitled Health Data Science for Rare Diseases at the 1st International UAE Rare Disease Society Congress (Dubai, UAE) and another lecture entitled Health Data Science for Precision Medicine at International Precision Medicine Exhibition & Summit 2023 (Dubai, UAE). At the United Nations level, he was invited as a panellist for the Workshop on Teaching and Learning Competencies for Artificial Intelligence held at UNESCO Headquarters (Paris, France) in 2019. Besides, he was invited as an invited speaker/talk/lecture/keynote at the Scientific Workshop of the EU-ASEAN Computational Biology (Malaysia) in 2011, at the German-ASEAN Science & Technology Network Workshop (Singapore) in 2012, at the International Seminar of Robotic for Bio-production Systems and Agriculture (Indonesia) in 2013, and at the Department of Statistics Malaysia in 2018. Apart from that, he has been invited as an invited speaker for eight events/seminars/workshops related to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Besides that, he also became an invited speaker/panel for another 13 events/seminars/workshops. Not only being the invited speaker in those academic workshops, he was also invited by The University of Queensland (Australia), Osaka Prefecture University (Japan), Osaka Institute of Technology (Japan), The University of Canterbury (New Zealand), and Massey University (New Zealand) to deliver lectures to their student and staff.

In the meantime, he was appointed as a head officer for the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Osaka Institute of Technology (Japan) and the Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics Research Group (AIBIG) from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). Then, he was again appointed as a head officer for MoU and the memorandum of agreement (MoA) between Salamanca University (Spain) and AIBIG. Apart from that, he was also involved as a head officer for MoU and MoA between the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Big Data from Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK) and Salamanca University (Spain) and UMW Corporation. After that, he was appointed as the head officer for the Reciprocal Confidentiality Agreement between the Technology Innovation Institute (Abu Dhabi Government's Advanced Technology Research Council) and the College of Medicine and Health Sciences (United Arab Emirates University, UAE). Through the involvement with the MoU and MoA, various activities have been successfully carried out such as research projects, professional certification, joint publication, training, joint conferences, the appointment of visiting professors, student exchange, and staff exchange.