Ahmad A. Al-Yamani,
Director General, ICT Sector and Smart Cities Office Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA)
Ahmad Al-Yamani is the head of the ICT sector and the smart cities office at the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) and a faculty member in the computer engineering department at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, where he has been the IT champion of the strategic plan for higher education in the country. After receiving a PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MSc in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford, he was appointed as the assistant director of Stanford Center for Reliable Computing, where he led the design, test, and analysis teams for one of the largest academic projects in IC reliability in the world. Later on, he worked at the advanced development labs of LSI logic, where he led a major IC test cost saving operation based on technologies that he patented achieving millions of dollars of annual savings. He also established very strong collaboration between Stanford and LSI. Ahmad also worked as a consulting assistant professor at Stanford and Santa Clara Universities where he taught graduate EE/CS courses and mentored PhD students. Ahmad has over 40 publications that he co-authored with 23 different people from 16 different countries and 4 different continents.