Mounir Hamdi is the founding Dean of the College of Science and Engineering at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU). He is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) fellow for “contributions to design and analysis of high-speed packet switching”, which is the highest research distinction bestowed by IEEE.
Before joining HBKU, he was Chair Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and the head of the computer science and engineering departments. He received his BS degree in electrical engineering with a computer engineering minor (with distinction) from the University of Louisiana in 1985. He obtained his MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 1987 and 1991, respectively.
He has been a faculty member in the department of computer science and engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology since 1991, where he was a founding member of the University. He became the Head and Chair Professor of the department. Under his headship tenure, his department was ranked 13th in the world by QS World Ranking (2013) and 21st in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) in 2013. He was the director of the Computer Engineering Program, director of the Master of Science in Information Technology, and Director of the Computer Networking Research Lab. His general area of research is in high-speed wired/wireless networking, in which he has published more than 400 research publications, received numerous research grants, and graduated more than 50 MS/PhD students. He is listed amongst the top 2% researchers world-wide by Stanford University, with an H-index of 48.